Dedalus' Children
by Laryna6
Summary: What if Anise took Luke with her as well as Ion when the miasma rose? It is said that all paths lead to the same Scored destiny. Luke alone has the power to change that. It's just a matter of getting there. Thank Lorelei for the city of fontech geeks. AU
1. Chronos

Disclaimer: I don't own Tales of the Abyss, etc. The rightful owners, including Namco, do.

This fic is also all done: I'm just going to be going over it and posting it section by section. Enjoy. Or not.

_The population of Malkuth is about 1.5 million. From there, I'd say the planet's population is 3-4 million. That's about a fifth of the population of New York City. And, what with all the monsters, the characters themselves state that travel is pretty rare, outside of trading and religious trips to Daath. Jade's response to Guy knowing about places from reading tourist guidebooks is riiiight. Only the rich would be able to afford the bodyguards for a trip to, for example, Jade's hometown, the tourist capital of the planet, with lots of nasty monsters in the vicinity._

_Akzeriuth had a population of ten thousand. Take small populations (by our standards) and isolation like that and you've got the sort of situation the colonies in the Americas had. Their rulers (Grand Chokmah and Baticul, Spain and England), had nothing in common with them and were too out of touch to know the local conditions well enough to make good laws. _

_The Rugnica plains have very weak monsters, so it's possible for a caravan to travel with supplies (as in the one they snuck into St. Binah aboard) without any defenders but the drivers, but imagine doing that near Keterberg. _

_The vastly different architecture, tech levels, etc between the various cities could be put down to either bad worldbuilding or good worldbuilding. In this case, good. _Of course_ Engave's tech doesn't match Sheridan's. The places have nothing in common and probably very few of the inhabitants of either one will ever leave their home, much less travel to the other city. _

_Small, isolated populations cultural drift. Over two thousand years? If it weren't for the Order of Lorelei they'd all be speaking different languages. Look what happened after the Roman Empire collapsed, and Europe didn't have monsters to deal with. Some people say that widely differing tech levels is a bad video game cliché. Those people need to study history and realize that most of the modern world still has widely differing tech levels. _

_The residents of Sheridan flat-out admit that they traded hands between Malkuth and Kimlasca recently, aren't exactly loyal to the crown, and have no trouble at all helping Col. Curtiss, an enemy of their 'rulers' when those rulers are being stupid. Sheridan and Belkend aren't speaking to each other. Duke Fabre deciding to secede and make Belkend independent is a very real threat, real enough to cause the king of Kimlasca to marry his sister to him and effectively make Duke Fabre's son the next king in exchange for loyalty. The highly variable prices are an example of areas' isolation. _

_Engave and St. Binah are close enough and it's safe enough to travel that they're quite similar. The Theor Forest is all that separates them from the capital, and note the huge cultural difference between them and the inhabitants of Grand Chokmah. The capital's citizens think Peony's the bomb. Engave and St. Binah mostly don't care about the guy, other than as the person who will hopefully keep them out of a war they don't care about. The closest thing to a cosmopolitan place is Chesedonia, and they will travel to different places but their concern is making money, the same way Engave's is food, St. Binah's is refining organic products (gels, bottles, soap…), Sheridan's is rocket fontech (military/industrial), Belkend's is medicine/Fomicry/consumer fontech… If you think having cities with such different priorities is strange, compare Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Lots of travel between them, yet still very different places. These are places with very distinct cultural identities. There's a reason getting those places connected to the outside world is such a huge side quest collection in the game, with so many titles & bonuses involved. _

-

One of the many odd things about the replica is that he doesn't seem to understand physical pain the way real humans do. He feels it, yes, but it causes irritation instead of what a normal reaction would be. It's not the pain that's the issue, it's the fact that someone hit him, or he tripped, or it's one of those damn headaches again.

What Asch feels as a mental blurring, being burned away as something greater impinges on his awareness the replica feels as pain and a voice in his head. Asch doesn't feel pain when it happens because his body and everything there is feels distant, out of touch, subsumed. It's the same thing, fundamentally: the replica talked about hearing a voice when Lorelei spoke to him (lucky bastard, in this as in all things). Asch just found himself caught up in someone else's mental agony.

No wonder the replica had no idea what Asch was talking about at the Oasis.

Asch tried not to scream at first. He screamed himself hoarse hours ago. His replica is mouthing off to the torturers even though Asch most certainly did not ask the dreck to try to distract their attention from him.

Luke had retorted that Asch should just be grateful, and if he couldn't manage that then he should shut up and rest up so they have the strength to get out of here, as if there's any chance.

Well, seeing Asch hurt and the fact that Asch has himself half in the replica's body, the same way he stole the replica's spirit and left its body in Yulia City, because it hurts less in here. Actually, his presence is hurting the replica more than the torturers are, which lets them think they're doing their job and keeps them doing this to the replica instead of something else. Asch isn't thinking about the fact that he objects to Luke _willingly_ suffering pain to spare Asch and is deriving a vindictive satisfaction from the fact that _he's_ hurting Luke to save his own skin. Luke has picked up on it, though, and it's pissing Asch off even more that Luke won't hate him for it.

Luke transfers Lorelei's two thousand years of heartbreak into physical pain because it hurts less that way. Asch thinks either he's right or having those headaches for so long was good training. On the other hand, it's demeaning that his replica thinks so little of himself that someone taking one of his fingernails off causes less anguish than seeing Asch, who hates his guts and is torturing him mentally right now more than they are, try to scream but be unable to. It's also embarrassing. A _pampered replica_ has a higher pain tolerance than God-general Asch the Bloody.

Asch knows what to do if interrogated by torture. Everyone will break, eventually, so lie. Lie and lie again until when you snap either you'll be so broken you won't remember what the truth was or they won't believe you. This, though, isn't that kind of torture session.

The premise here is that the first one who breaks and swears to help Van lives and the other one dies. This is taking place on Legretta's initiative, and the replica is soft for worrying so much about what will happen if this gets back to her former student Tear. Of course, this is the idiot that still calls him Master Van.

Asch doesn't care about the replica, but he'll be damned if he'll forswear himself yet again. Luke doesn't want Asch to die. Too bad these goons haven't figured out that they'd have a much better chance tempting Luke if they said that if he helped Van Asch would_ live_.

What an idiot.

And Luke doesn't even hold a real grudge against Mohs' spy for bringing him here and handing Ion over to Mohs.

Love isn't worth putting up with betrayal.

Of course, Asch would like to tell himself that, but Van still has more hooks in him than he'd like to admit.

Normally Luke wants to talk to him, trying to draw out words even if they're just abuse, but right now Luke was trying to think and Asch's insults were a distraction from surviving this. Asch shouldn't feel so insulted that his replica was ignoring him. What did he care?

…it would be a distraction, at least.

Luke wouldn't even hold a grudge if Asch did swear himself to Van, long enough to find an opportunity to kill himself at least, and left Luke to die screaming. They'd do it as an example of what would happen if Asch betrayed Van.

The idea_ hurts_ Luke, but he wouldn't hold a grudge. He's used to it, and maybe it isn't so strange that physical pain isn't such a big deal when Luke _always _hurts. This is better than the nightmares of Akzeriuth (he deserves this because of that, in fact). This is better than finding out everything was a lie, again and again and again, that Van despised him. Not even the other side of love that was hatred: he held him in contempt. A thing, a tool, when…

Luke's trying to shield him from that. It would be nice if Luke would put that same effort from shielding him from the physical pain, but Luke doesn't think that way.

At least Luke's utter strangeness provides a distraction.

Perhaps what he saw right after Akzeriuth was the first rumblings of the avalanche. Snow comes down, idiot adventurers are crushed, and the mountain's granite is revealed. Luke's gotten used to what left him so uncertain then. The shell that tried to fight him for control is gone. Asch told him it was a losing battle, that he couldn't do it, a worthless replica, and it was gloating, Asch enjoyed telling him that, but the replica was actually listening and doesn't fight anymore.

What the replica is thinking about is that Tear, Jade, Guy, and Natalia have to have gotten out of Daath okay. They're strong (stronger than the replica, Asch tells him, and the idiot finds this reassuring, of all things). They'll be fine.

He's worried about Asch, and worried about Ion, and worried about what could have made Anise do this (money) and will she be able to live with herself, and there isn't much worry for himself in there, just that stubbornness.

Asch is of the opinion that House Fabre has very stupid genes. The replica seemingly has a will of tissue paper when it comes to most things but there are some things that are not easily compromised.

Death, for one thing, and the replica has to pit its will to live and help others against its will not to hurt others every time it fights, and it's always a pyrrhic victory.

Endurance. That's what Asch is forced to find admirable, a bit, about the replica, and perhaps it's what's really shaming him into not giving in, not a long-discarded code of honor.

And one of the torturers just told him that Mohs took Ion to read the score and he's already dead, days ago.

Eventually the camel's back will break.

When Luke snaps Asch gets worried, because the rays of light that Luke summons to help defend himself against the headaches started to make sense earlier, and normal hyperresonance is bad enough. He does _not_ want to be at ground zero of a hyperresonance-based mystic arte, spawned from some strange derivative of normal overlimit.

Then he wakes up.

It would be nice to think it was just a dream, but Asch knows that people don't feel pain in dreams.

The replica wasn't answering.

-

It is, according to Ginji, five days before Asch remembers the miasma returning, and since going through what he wrote in his diary was one of the things the replica did to keep sane Asch knows that, all other things being equal, they can intercept them in Chesedonia. Only they're not there, which is yet more proof that something is very wrong. Keterberg is the next destination, the place they should have left to go to Chesedonia so Luke could get the rest of the shopping done.

They're there.

Luke isn't. Neither is their Albiore.

-

He doesn't say anything about the dream that wasn't. It sounds ludicrous. Claiming a dream is real? The replica turning back time is even worse. The Necromancer would be able to debate it rationally, though. And the others might not scoff. Maybe it was Lorelei instead of the replica, or something? What he does do is insist Anise stay in Keterberg. The replica was worried that Jade would kill Anise, and frankly Asch wouldn't care too much. The replica needs better taste in friends. Better taste in a lot of things.

Asch is just looking for him because otherwise circumstances being as they are he'll have to travel with these idiots. Jade's smart, and one of the few people who knows much about replicas and passage rings and all of that who is on their side. A lot of his excursions into Luke's head (Luke only has headaches or notices when Asch tries to get his attention) are to find out what Jade has found out. Without that recourse he'll have to cart the replica's thinking brain around.

Jade's going to be especially important once the miasma comes back.

Only the miasma does _not_ come back on schedule.

That would be making Asch think that maybe it was just a dream, possibly caused by inhaling something questionable at Mushroom Rock Road, except that _now _he can feel the replica. And Keterberg Port's military base has hyperresonance detection equipment and there was just a _big_ one somewhere near Yulia City a few hours ago.

Asch wishes he'd thought of that, destroying the replica machines that were sucking up all the seventh fonons and causing the core to shake and breaking the Tartarus' barrier. He'd thought Van had smashed the ship and that was what had done it, but it looks like he was wrong and the replica was right.

Not that Luke is happy to be right when they find him on a nearby island. He's sitting down and shaking, Noelle staying in the Albiore so she won't try to comfort him when he doesn't deserve it. Or maybe he's afraid of what happened after Akzeriuth happening again, when they all rejected him. Not that destroying a floating island populated only by replicas and Van's forces is a bad thing.

"Go away, please, just go away." The replica's shoulders are shaking, shaking hard, and he doesn't want them to see him, doesn't want to see their faces when they realize he's repeated Akzeriuth.

"Luke." Tear hesitated. She didn't want anyone to see her cry, herself, and it was good that Luke wasn't running to someone to make it all better, but, "Stop crying." Crying never solved anything. Right?

"Luke, I need you to tell me what happened." Jade's need to know overwhelmed the still-new part of him that listened to Luke's nightmares and wished he knew how to comfort him. Hearing Luke cry hurt, so he wanted him to stop crying almost as much as he wanted the information.

"Leave him alone!" Noelle? She came running over the hill, enraged.

Guy stopped her. "Uh, Noelle…"

She slapped him and Guy fell to the ground, shock added to his usual fear of women. "Can't you see he needs to cry?! Oh! You people!" Hands on her hips, she railed at them. "He just killed an entire island mostly full of innocent people to save the world and you aren't going to even let him cry himself out?! He just kept the miasma from returning, he saved you, so you can just wait until he's ready to talk about it!" She stalked over and tugged Luke up. "Come on. You can cry on the Albiore where there are comfy chairs, I'll lock the doors so they'll leave you alone." Noelle had just lost a lot of people, they remembered. Sheridan's researchers were the next thing to family.

"Okay," Luke said softly, allowing himself to be dragged along unresisting.

Tear raised her hand and wanted to reach after them, wanted to say something, but Luke just hung there and Noelle walked forcefully: neither turned to look.

When Luke was settled to her satisfaction Noelle returned.

"Were there captives on the island?" Jade asked.

"No. Just replicas and Van's guys. We scouted it out first." Why was he asking that?

"You said there were innocent civilians present."

"I meant the _replicas_. You can't get much more innocent than a newborn baby." Noelle glared.

"They were making replicas there?"

"Of course. Why did you think he destroyed it? We didn't have anything else that could take out that facility fast enough, and the seventh fonons it was sucking up would have wrecked the Tartarus and brought back the miasma. We confirmed it." We being Sheridan.

"Did he have a dream?" Asch had wanted another way to say it, but that was blurted out.

"No." Noelle looked at him. "Come to think of it, the nightmares have been really bad recently."

Guy looked at the ground. "And this isn't going to make things any better… Why didn't you guys bring us?"

"I work for Luke, not any of you."

"What?!" Natalia seemed somewhat outraged. "Sheridan is Kimlascan territory, and as princess you are under my authority!"

"Well, you weren't there to order me not to." Noelle folded her arms. "Luke's the one with hyperresonance. That's why I'm with Luke and Ginji's with Asch, right Ginji?"

Asch's pilot nodded.

"So when he says he needs me to take him to Sheridan without you I go, just like Ginji takes Asch places without telling you guys anything even though you want to track him down." Noelle wasn't backing down. "They're the important ones, that's what the Classes decided. They need to be able to get places, like the passage rings, quickly in order to save Auldrant. The rest of you, no offense, are support crew, and frankly Jade would be more useful in a lab full time."

"That's one way of looking at it," Jade admitted. "I did nearly become a researcher before I decided a more hands-on approach was better."

"If I hadn't followed Luke's orders that island would still be there and the miasma would be here again. So you can take it up with the Classes in Sheridan, but I doubt they'll listen."

Belkend was technically in Asch's father's domain. The king had married his sister to Duke Fabre to cur any rebellious tendencies. Why rebel when if he stayed loyal his son would be king one day? Except that Asch wouldn't have lived that long. However, as Van had proved, Belkend's loyalty was to knowledge. Sheridan, which had changed hands between Malkuth and Kimlasca only recently, was even more independent. There was always the sense that Sheridan was aware that they were the ones who built the weaponry, they had better ones (like the Albiore was a vast improvement over Malkuth's landships), and if the Crown thought it could get in the way of their priorities then Sheridan could just arrange to go back to Malkuth.

Sheridan didn't have Chesedonia's independence, but then Chesedonia wasn't independent: it just answered to the Order instead of to other countries. Luke had no idea what he'd done by inviting Astor to the conference lowering the land. He'd essentially put Chesedonia on an even footing with independent nations. Luckily everyone had bigger problems than making sure the trade city didn't get uppity.

"I suppose it's useless to take it up with you, then," Jade admitted. "Luke, however…"

"He shouldn't have run off like that. We were all so worried!" Natalia, worried about that… Argh!

"He didn't want you to see him like that. How did you find Ginji and get here so quickly, anyway?" She looked at her brother.

"Asch had me fly to Chesedonia and then Keterberg five days ago."

"The same day Luke and I headed out?" Now everyone was looking at Asch.

"What was that you said about a dream? Could it have come across your link from Luke?" Curse the necromancer's insight!

-

_What is it with me and deliberate tense confusion in Tales of the Abyss fics? As you may notice, 'usual' povs here are in past tense, while Asch is often in present, usually when something is related to what went on in the beginning. This is because while the past tense conveys someone looking back at what's going with 20/20 hindsight, Asch does not have that perspective on issues. _

_I was looking over this and going, you know, it's an effective style but it's a mark of a bad writer to switch tenses like that, but my Asch muse refused to let me rewrite it and lately I'd rather have the writing style I want to write in then have to tear something out and figure out a way to convey weird mental states ICly that doesn't confuse the reader. _

_If you just say 'someone's head was spinning' or something like that, it's telling, and showing is better than telling. If you can convey all of that in the way the text affects the reader, it's sort of demonstrating instead of showing. _

_Re-reading this conveys to me that Asch is sort of… trying to get perspective and live in the present (everyone else's past tense) but stuck in the past to the point where it's his present. I'd like to know how readers perceive it, because I know what the text is trying to say and that affects what effect it has on me. _

_Asch is not the most mentally stable character on Auldrant. If I had to pick one it might be Peony, who has an acceptable level of venting insanity & loneliness & issues that doesn't involve destroying the world. As long as he's got his rappigs and can force people to cosplay on occasion he'll be fine. _


	2. Uranus

Thankfully, there was a knocking on the Albiore II's door that provided a timely interruption. Noelle, giving them a look that said to stay back, went up and opened it a crack. "No good. You still look miserable. No one can get anything done when they're that sad, I know that. Especially not hyperresonance, or it could go out of control."

"I'm crying, but it's not making me feel any better." Luke's voice was small.

"It is, you're talking again and you _want _to feel better again. That's a huge improvement." Noelle leaned in and hugged him. "Do you want one of them to come sit with you? That helps, someone keeping you company just because they care, even if they don't say anything."

"No."

"Why not? It really does help, and I'll kick them out if they make you feel worse."

"She would, too," Ginji muttered.

"They…"

"They forgave you for Akzeriuth, right? They know that wasn't your fault, and you made the right decision here."

"But Akzeiuth _was_ my fault."

"…what?"

"I went with Master Van and it was my hyperresonance that destroyed it."

"So… Akzeriuth is your fault instead of that crazy bastard's because you trusted your teacher, who you had no good reason to distrust, and he hypnotized you into losing control of your powers. Riiight. Come on, Luke, you know better than that. It's not your fault at all, right guys?"

There was no answer.

"Guys?" Noelle leaned her head out to glare at them.

When she put it that way…

"Hey, I told him not to go with Van, even if no one else did anything," Asch protested.

"Did you say why?"

"He wouldn't have believed me."

"So… you told him to trust you, someone who is still a jerk to him, instead of the man who taught him without giving any good reasons to listen to a word you said." And people from Sheridan, as well as fontechies and research fonists in general, were insanely loyal to their teachers, as the class rivalry demonstrated. "Yeah, you made it so that he would have to be a complete idiot to ignore you and go with Van. You did your best to prevent Akzeriuth. Right." Noelle looked over Asch to Ginji.

Ginji sighed. "Noelle, I have to share a cabin with this guy." And Asch would give up the Albiore if that was what it took to not have to hear about Luke.

"_Now_ I understand why you keep begging me to trade. 'Luke should have the faster Albiore.' Right, Ginji, _right_." She gave him one last glare and turned back to Luke. "_We'll_ stand vigil with you if they won't." She shut the door behind her, locking it again.

Awkward silence reigned.

Asch couldn't just take off, as much as he wanted to. He wanted answers. So did everyone else. The problem was that they were all looking at him. "What?"

"Who's we?" Ginji asked, not paying attention to Asch at all. Determinedly so, in fact.

"Mieu?" Tear suggested.

The question was answered when the door opened again and a familiar head peeped out. "Anise?" Ion asked hopefully.

"Fon Master Ion? What are you doing here?"

Not giving the other replica a chance to answer Tear, Asch declared that, "She's back in Keterberg. What are you doing here?" Never mind that he just asked exactly what Tear had already asked.

Ion cared more about Anise than Asch's rudeness: the replica was used to being used as a doormat. "In Keterberg? Why?"

"Because she's working for Mohs."

Ion looked sad, but it was at confirmation of something he'd already known, not the shock of betrayal.

"He told you about it?"

"Yes, that was why he came and rescued me. Although even though I'm the Fon Master I wasn't much help. As far as I know no one has ever seriously even considered the possibility of doing what he did. It's very impressive." Ion found the replica impressive and not Asch. Asch had been the helpless victim.

He hated that the replica took everything that should be his. Name, home, glory, power… "Can he do it again?" Go back before Van kidnapped him?

"It's not a good idea. I was talking with the people at Sheridan, and it seems to have put some things out of alignment. The stars are in the wrong positions, even!"

"So whatever he did just affected Auldrant?"

"Yes. We're even further along in the planet's orbit around Rem then we should be. We think it only affected things inside the fon belt. The tilt is the same as it should be at the time we think it is, so the seasons are the same, but we should be having the weather we normally have a month and a half from now from where we are relative to the stars."

"A month and a half?" He knew torture worked partially by disorienting you, but that meant he had been there for around two weeks!

Ion nodded.

"What are you saying?" The others were utterly out of their depth, but Jade knew enough to know how shocking this was. It took perspective to be shocked instead of confused.

"Where did he get the seventh fonons?" Asch demanded. Too many and the planet storm should have gone crazy and the miasma would have broken loose the instant Luke did it.

"The fon belt. It's a lot dimmer. Didn't you notice it?"

"I wasn't looking."

"We were in Keterberg, and the aurora borealis was hiding it." Jade frowned. "Now that I think about it, I've never seen such an active aurora."

"If the fon belt was drained then the aurora's going to get more intense. The fon belt absorbs the sixth fonons that aren't good for living beings that Rem gives off. If it's not absorbing as many then they're going to get stopped by the third fonons in the upper atmosphere instead: that's what causes the aurora," Ginji told him.

"Thank you for explaining it to the rest of them for me." Jade hated explaining things, having gotten very, very sick of it. Having grown up in Keterberg he knew about the aurora.

"Well, I'd better go sit with Luke. I just wanted to see if Anise was here." Ion was inside and the door locked again before anyone could react.

Once again everyone was looking at Asch for answers. "I woke up and the past month and a half, it looks like, hadn't happened. I would have thought it was a dream, except you don't feel pain in dreams and the replica wouldn't answer when I asked him what was going on."

"What happened during that lost time?" The Necromancer _was _quick.

"The miasma returned, Ion and Luke were betrayed by Anise to Mohs, Luke was handed over to Legretta, you guys found the island of Feres but Van had already moved everything important somewhere else, and I was captured at the Tower of Rem. I found out that the replica goes into a strange sort of overlimit during those headaches of his, to endure the pain, and when he found out that Ion was already dead he snapped and used hyperresonance. I thought we were dead but the next thing I know I'm sleeping in a camp outside Grand Chokmah."

"Are you saying he used a hyperresonance-based mystic arte and changed the entire world to the way it was a month and a half ago?"

"That was what it seemed like to me."

"You can use memory circles to accomplish some things along those lines, for instance using wing bottles to restore you to another location, but actually bringing people back to life and resetting the entire planet?" Seeming to realize something, Jade looked at the door Ion had just gone through. "He seems to have Ion's memories, but… I suppose the souls of the dead return to the fon belt to await rebirth in_ legend_, but…"

"Are you saying that our Ion could be dead and that's another replica?" Guy finally spoke up. "Poor…" Not poor Anise, if she had betrayed him.

"Anise, how could you?" Natalia mourned.

"Wait a second," Asch realized. "Sync! He's going around reading the score and gathering replica data. If we're back in time, those people should still be alive, either that or he doesn't need to do it because they're already replicas."

"Sheridan's working on a replica and fomicry detector," Ginji volunteered. "We're a bit strapped for gald, though. We haven't even started on the bridge between Sheridan and Belkend that everyone wants to build as a memorial."

"Even without a device, examination in Belkend should reveal a replica. That wouldn't work for Ion, of course, but do you know any names of other people who died?"

"My parents." Those, he knew of. "A great many other people." A great many, the nameless, faceless sort he'd told Natalia to care for but lost the ability to himself.

"Wait, wait, back up a bit. Are you saying Luke and you time traveled?" Guy had started to get the idea, but only just.

"No," Jade said. "If they had time traveled they would have aged and everything else would have stayed the same. What happened is that the universe aged and Auldrant went back to the way it was. It's as if… Tear, you know the music discs? You can play them, and then if you go backwards on the disc and start playing it again then you can hear the same music again? It's somewhat like that. Only I hope this won't be just a repetition. Or if…"

"Are you saying that Luke _rewound the planet's memory so that he could go back and start over_?"

"I actually hadn't thought of it that way, but you're right, Guy. Lorelei, the planet's memory, would remember how things were and thus might be able to put things back _exactly _the way we were. Perhaps Luke and Asch retain their memories due to being Lorelei's isofons. I doubt Luke would have undone history just so that the same disasters could repeat themselves."

"If he can do that, then why wouldn't he undo Akzeriuth?" Natalia asked.

Jade pointed upwards. Keterberg had a lot of cloud cover, so people rarely looked up except to tell the weather, the aurora usually hidden by the clouds, but here? On this semi-tropical island they could see how dim the fon belt had grown. It looked like there just hadn't been enough power. "It seems we consistently underestimate Luke's powers. We were all aware he destroyed Akzeriuth, but it didn't seem real on some level. He's so _harmless_. Now that he's committed destruction on what is actually a greater scale, since at Akzeriuth he was used to destroy the passage ring and only the passage ring with admirable precision on Van Grants' part, and done something along these lines… One has to wonder what he is truly capable of. In retrospect, I should have had him executed after Akzeriuth. I should have. Someone with that sort of power is too dangerous to live. Someone who has used it already is… What was I thinking? _Was _I?"

"Are you saying he messed with our heads? Luke would never do that!" Guy was outraged.

"True. And if he had the capability he would never have been in that situation in the first place. At least, not if he had it knowingly. Some sort of unconscious defense mechanism? It's strange, in retrospect, that we not only accepted him back but accepted him as our leader so quickly. Why was he our leader at all, in the first place?" Jade was staring at the door of the Albiore now. "He's a child with the power to set fire to the very air we breathe and burn all of Auldrant to ashes, I knew that, I knew that rationally even before this, and yet I didn't think about what I was doing, putting that much pressure on someone that fragile when if he broke the entire world would pay the price. What was I thinking?! He, he handled it, and I saw that and I knew he could handle it, but why was I so sure when there was such a huge risk? Why was I so sure that he would never repeat Akzeriuth even at the cost of his own life? I've never…" He managed to shut himself up, finally.

"He's… Luke," Guy started to say, and then stopped. "That says it all, now that I think about it. He's Luke. I raised the kid, for crying out loud! He's more my family than Duke Fabre's, and… I knew he wasn't Asch. I knew it all along. I_ thought_ he was Asch, Luke, whatever, but I knew better. I knew this kid was a helpless little baby, not a crybaby running away from the world like Asch would have been if he really had amnesia."

"The seventh fonon is the fonon of memory." Tear spoke up now. "As well, as time, and sound. The fonon of songs that record our feelings and our bonds. The celestial harmonies." That was Order doctrine, but what followed wasn't. "Lorelei, Lorelei was a person to Yulia. Someone in the sword she kept at her side, the armor she wore. Not just something in the core or the fon belt, but… The songs, her hymns. They're for Lorelei. A lullaby, protection, strength, caring… I know what the fifth hymn means now," she realized. "Guidance. Judgement. Lorelei, Lorelei was a _child_ to Yulia." How was this relevant? "I sing the songs and… that's what I feel for him. If I hadn't traveled with him, I don't think I could have understood them so easily. Yulia know Lorelei, and those hymns were her understanding. Luke… Is that how I feel for Luke?" She clasped her hands to her chest and bowed her head in contemplation, almost in prayer. "I want to see him grow up. I want him to be proud, wise and happy."

"Happy… How could I have mistaken Luke for Asch? I suppose since I did not know anything about replicas there was no other explanation for why he looked so like him, but…" Natalia appeared distraught. "Luke is Luke and Asch is Asch. Or… I don't really know you anymore, Asch. I want to, but even when I found out that Luke wasn't Luke…" He wanted to comfort her but he didn't know _how_.

"It doesn't matter, Natalia, you weren't the only one." He'd better try that again. "I don't hold it against you."

"Asch, are you capable of this?" Jade seemed to have recovered and was forcefully ending the pity party.

"No." Damn it. "I can't use that overlimit he called on at all, and I tried." Great, great damage reducer that it was, he would have killed (Luke) to be able to use it while he was being tortured. "If I can't enter that overlimit, then I doubt I can use a mystic arte, or mystic arte equivalent, that only happened in it."

"Did he use it intentionally?"

"No. He snapped. If he hadn't activated the mystic arte he would have vaporized wherever we were."

"He snapped and unleashed a hyperresonance? What caused this?" It _had_ to be avoided.

"He was being tortured and they told him Ion had died at least a week ago." Or had it been weeks, and he'd heard week? Maybe telling them the wrong time had been to disorient as well. "I think it was a… he was critically injured, they were… I think there might be another mystic arte available in that overlimit."

"They tortured him?!" Guy had his hand on his sword already.

Asch snorted. "Oh, he's fine, it didn't…" No, wait, it did happen, and Luke remembered it. Torture like that was meant to break people. Scars on bodies could be fixed for a song. Scars on minds, now those were far harder. Real torturers didn't leave marks, they'd only gone for wounds to demonstrate that they were in real risk of death, their bodies knowing that their health was in the red.

"If Anise betrayed him to that, perhaps that's why he left us behind." Natalia sighed. "First Van, now Anise."

"Do you know why she did it?" Tear asked, hoping there was some good reason.

"Her parents are in debt to Mohs, and he kidnapped them when she was reluctant at first. Luke heard him threatening her." And had told Asch about it when arguing about the fact Luke was an idiot for trusting Anise and should hate her.

"Where were we during all this?" Where was I? That was what Guy was really asking.

"You went to Daath to speak with Ion: Anise ran in and said she had something she wanted to show Ion and Luke, you let them go thinking it was 'kid stuff.'" Betrayal was so very easy once you had their trust.

"Ginji!"

"Yeah, Noelle?"

"Take them and go, he needs to be alone!" Noelle stalked out, carrying a protesting Mieu by the ear and followed by a reluctant Ion. Noelle was normally a sweet, cheerful girl: she'd passed information to Asch several times without telling Natalia. Sheridan's children were here to expedite things, after all. Now her face had the determined expression of someone who was _not crying_ and Asch felt a sort of satisfaction that she'd been worn down, just like him and everyone else. "We found this deserted island first!"

Asch realized that was why Luke had been sitting out by himself. After what had happened even Asch had found his usual distaste for company intensified. The company of these people wasn't just uncomfortable but there was an element of skin-crawling. It wasn't on the level of Guy's phobia of women, but now that he thought about it Luke had seemed to get _worse_ when he saw them, near-catatonic when Noelle carried him.

"Please, everyone," Ion pleaded formally. "He's… he needs to be alone now."

"He insisted on being there for me when I cried: I need to do the same for him!" Tear's protests only made Ion sadder.

"He almost flinched when I put my hand on his shoulder." Ion bowed his head in mourning. "He… please."

"But…" Guy hated the idea.

"Would me hugging you help you feel better about what happened to your sister?" Noelle's question was rhetorical.

Guy gulped. "Point taken."

"I generally find that a distraction is better than dwelling on things," Jade suggested.


	3. Ananke

Actually, upon reflection, the Greek myth figure that Lorelei's mythology on Auldrant most closely echoes might not be Chronos (time, often confused with the titan Cronus, Zeus's father), Uranus (the heavens and hence Auldrant's fon belt), Gaia (the planet's memory), etc. but Ananke. Mother of the fates, avatar of necessity. The wikipedia article sums it up well with, "the most powerful dictator of all fate and circumstance."

Greek myth, as most learn it, essentially focuses on the fourth and fifth generations, if you put Chaos as the first generation. Although perhaps it should be the zeroth, which would make Ananke and Chronos the first entities to come into existence. Gaia, Uranus, and Pontus were essentially brought into being by them (hatching the world egg), although there's some disagreement among the various traditions about this. If Chaos is first, I'm sticking to the second (and possibly third) generation of entities in this.

-

"Yeah, that's what Aston thought. Then he got drunk, fell off the tower, and if the ol' Rocket Fontechist hadn't had quick enough reflexes and two life bottles on him, one that broke and activated when he jumped down after him, he'd have _stayed _dead. He wouldn't have even considered risking something like that sober, but _everyone_ has moments of weakness and I don't want anyone else to die!"

That was even news to Ginji. "He did that?!"

Noelle hesitated to confirm it. "He's fine now and they're keeping an eye on him, but… It's not good to keep things inside like that. If there's too much fifth-fonon build up you drain it off before the thing explodes." She pointed at the Albiore. "He's too far gone right now to care if you, if you… what does he like to do, anyway?"

They all looked at each other. None of his friends knew his hobbies? "Fight?" Guy suggested finally.

"But he hates killing," Natalia reminded him.

"Remember at the arena in Baticul? He loves fighting, but only if no one gets hurt." Guy shrugged. "If we get through this and… Well, he could easily get a job at the arena. Easily. I think it's because of Van, partially. He only really got to see him during practice." If Asch reclaimed his place and Luke was kicked out, what was he going to do? Guy for one would be willing to put him up. He got lonely in Grand Chokmah without Luke around, and he wasn't going to end up a lonely man with rappigs like Peony had when the Keterberg Crew split up.

Asch snorted. "Play-fighting."

"Well, he _is_ a kid. Kids are supposed to play." Guy was able to laugh it off, but was clearly not in the mood for his enemy's son to insult his charge. "Luke never wants to be alone. He'll say he does, but that's just when everyone's been bugging him about lack of progress. He's…" This was _worrying_.

"He knew that I needed someone there, that I shouldn't cry alone," Tear reminded them.

Noelle shook her head. "Crying is something people do partially to tell other people that they're sad so that those people will do something about it. It helps, when it's like that, to have someone there, because even if that person can't fix it at least the person crying will at least feel like someone cares and will _try_ to help with whatever's making them miserable. But when someone's like this… After Sheridan was invaded, a lot of people would go out into the desert when they needed a break. If home isn't safe and you need someplace safe then you go where no one can find you. He doesn't feel safe enough to cry when people are there. Crying is showing that you're vulnerable, it's a display of weakness, and he seems to think he'll get attacked if he reveals that he's weak."

Everyone looked at her. "What?"

"That was a rather profound insight," Jade told her.

"Well, that's because you're a man, but I thought every woman knew that. It's idiot men that tell people not to cry, because men think that they're the stronger sex and that means that if a woman's crying it's because they failed. They'd rather someone be miserable inside without anyone comforting them than take a hit to their ego…" Noelle cut off the tirade.

That blow seemed to have struck home. None of them, the adults, the older and wiser ones, had managed to stop Akzeriuth, stop Luke from being tortured. They'd failed, and they didn't want to see how much their failure had hurt the person they'd taken responsibility for.

Noelle sighed at them. "Look, he'll need to talk to you later, when he's feeling better, but right now he's not feeling well enough to handle anybody, _especially _people he trusts. Just leave him alone, okay? Ginji, you stay here with the Albiore II so he can wave for you when he wants to be picked up. If there's two of us here, then I should get back to Sheridan and report."

"Aren't there monsters on the island?" Guy was obviously searching for excuses.

"He can handle them." Noelle brushed off his objections. "I wouldn't have let him wander out of sight if they were any challenge. In that sort of mood it's too easy to not fight hard enough, let yourself get distracted and make stupid mistakes, because a lot of you _wants _to be eaten and get it over with."

"Uh, Noelle, you're not exactly being very reassuring."

"Look, people cry so that you can tell what they're feeling. He's feeling really, really bad, and I'm not going to let him lie to himself and say that everything's fine when he knows better and I'm not going to lie to you about how serious this is. There are two people with hyperresonance on the planet, one of them is him," she pointed at Asch, which to her seemed to say it all, "and Luke isn't doing well either. If I have to take off, shoot the Albiore III so you're stranded here, find another island, and come back to pick you up when he's feeling better than I will. The fate of Auldrant is more important then you feeling good about how you've been treating him." She folded her arms thoughtfully. "Ginji, you stay here in the II. The III_ is_ faster, after all. Come on, I'll show you the changes I made to the controls while the others board."

He nodded and they boarded the Albiore II, leaving the rest to them.

When Noelle came out they followed her reasonably tamely onto the III. "Do you know the controls for this one?" Asch asked.

"It's got the standard set: Ginji hasn't made any alterations to it yet and he was the one who did more of the training simulations, so he's used to these ones. I can use these, but with the Albiore II's upgrades I had to work out a better arrangement to improve efficiency." In other words, these controls were_ so_ last… few months. "The III has better speed, the II has better maneuverability, among other things."

Guy's eyes drifted over the ship on the way to Sheridan, but the heart of the fontech buff wasn't in it.

-

"What did you say to Anise?" Was Ion's question on the flight.

"Asch didn't even tell me why he didn't want her along. I left her to Nephry's tender mercies." Nephrite was a softer stone than Jadeite, but they were still very much alike. Keterberg natives had a tendency to be named after stones: it was a way of distinguishing between the people who belonged there and the tourists, even tourists whose families had been there since the reign of the king who had put Keterburg on the map, not entirely to the satisfaction of the locals.

Living in a cold land could be said to cause a cold, practical nature. If you didn't get the wood cut you froze to death. Harsh reality was right outside your door, and inside if you weren't careful. It was a viewpoint that wasn't all that compatible with casinos. Calling someone a gambler, as Nephry did Jade, wasn't quite as bad as calling them a tourist, but close. If anything Nephry _was_ more stubborn than Jade: Asch knew this because of the dossiers the god-generals had been forced to read on the important world leaders. "What is the amount of her parents' debts?"

"I already covered them." Malkuth wouldn't have to. "I have discretionary funds. And I assigned them to a small shrine along the road near Tataroo Valley."

"That major a trade route isn't the safest place for those with a tendency to fall prey to confidence men. Could I suggest Engave? They are quite fond of you there."

"We'd be happy to put them up in Sheridan," Ginji volunteered. "They aren't preachy, are they?" Sheridan was home to the people who insisted that Lorelei, for whom a _two-thousand-year-old religion_ had been named, had _still_ not been proven to exist. They avoided conflict with the Order in the same way they avoided conflict with whoever was ruling them: setting up a reasonable state of being and keeping to themselves.

In the snowy wastes you worked or you died. In the desert you took it easy or you died. Sheridan was home to dreamers and people who crafted fontech to do the work of survival because fontech could be built indoors, where there were thick walls to keep out the heat, and unlike humans fontech didn't die of heatstroke. People from Sheridan didn't act unless it was important, because to act was to risk death, but when they did something they did it with the certainty that came from knowing exactly how important what they were doing was, because they took time to think it through first when you needed water then you needed water or you died. Working hard might just make you die sooner, but working smart could give you a chance.

Natalia had no earthly idea before this that Noelle was keeping Asch informed of their progress and knew what Asch was up to most of the time. The group hadn't asked, Noelle hadn't volunteered the information.

Ah, survival training. Survival near Keterberg was work. Build a fire, build an igloo, and do it quick before you died. Survival near Sheridan meant getting in the shade and lying there until it cooled down.

The same heartlessness the people of Keterberg had towards those who lost everything taking the foolish risks of the casino Sheridan felt towards those who picked up the weapons they made and used them for foolishness. Growing up in those climates you knew that only an utter fool would do something like that.

Nephry was the first Keterberg native to rule the city since Malkuth had conquered it. Not to mention that Noir was running an entire independent city right under Kimlasca's nose.

He shouldn't care, it wasn't his country anymore that was falling apart, but it was still Natalia's. The great empires existed to a very large degree because of the Score. Without it? The people of Baticul loved Natalia. The people of Sheridan thought she was nice but clueless. A semi-loveable idiot on the same level as that replica. Or, no. As this demonstrated they were far more loyal to Luke than to her.

"How do the people in Sheridan feel about the possibility that they just had a month and a half of their lives erased?" Asch asked Ion, and Ginji.

"Well, I was with you so they would have had more opportunity to get used to it, but it sounds like a month and a half I'm happy not to have gone through. I'll bet you a hundred gald I died in there, if you got captured someplace you only could have gotten to if I flew you."

Asch hesitated. "I don't know if you did or not."

"You probably had bigger worries." Ginji wasn't going to hold grudges for a death he didn't remember.

"I think it was a miracle," Ion volunteered. "Regardless of whether Lorelei helped Luke do it or not, the power of Lorelei intervened to protect Auldrant. I… I think for the first time I'm… I want to be the Fon Master. Not to replace the original Ion, but for the person the Fon Master is _supposed_ to be doing it for. Hearing that I had died, that was what made Luke perform that miracle. There are other replicas of Ion, but he did it for _me_."

"…he wanted to protect you." And couldn't even do that right. Luke hadn't been able to protect anyone, least of all himself, but he'd moved heaven and earth to gain another chance to do it. Even if it meant killing. At least what Luke had done seemed to be keeping Ion from being struck badly by the idea of Anise's betrayal. Of course, for replicas who had been raised to believe they were valueless, like Sync, or Luke, who had been told to hurry up and become his 'true self…' They hadn't wanted Luke. They'd wanted Asch all along. The replica had practically forced those memories on him, since if he was forcing himself into Luke's head then he could at least pay rent in that fashion.

And he'd given Luke someone to hang on for. No, someone to fight back for. Luke would have endured if it had only been himself there, endured and endured long past the point of reason, when any sane human being would have given up and sought death…

"Asch? Asch?" Natalia? How long had he been staring into space, trapped in memories of things that had never happened, or never happened to _him_?

"It's nothing," he wanted to say, but the words wouldn't come out and when he raised a hand to try waving away her concern his hand shook. His hand was whole and didn't hurt, and yet he felt the remains of phantom injuries and that overwhelming sense of a lack of hope so complete, so deep, that there was no fear of death or pain, because things were already horrible, always terrible and it was only a matter of degree of torment. He'd lived, they both had lived, because there was no particular reason to stop living, kept moving by inertia. Trapped in lives made more bearable because they didn't have a real hope for freedom, not after so long spent trapped with people who planned to use them up.

And he had to ask himself _why_. Why save this Score-ridden world? Why try so hard? Why live? Simply out of a coward's fear of death? What made all this worth it?

He couldn't see himself reclaiming Natalia. It was his fault for abandoning her, and the replica simply hadn't been him. Asch was the one who had thought himself disposable, replaceable, interchangeable, being raised by a father with the knowledge that his son would die.

Too late now to just go home. It wasn't his home anymore. Van, the one who had take him in, been his stability, was _insane._ Just… why? Why was he here? "House Fabre is populated by fools and murderers," he commented dreamily.

Jade slapped him. Slapped him again when Asch's eyes focused but still were empty. "Luke wasn't the only one they tortured, was he. What were they trying to do?"

"Break us, so we would go back to Van. Or one of us would."

Jade cursed under his breath. The term 'Stockholm Syndrome' didn't exist on Auldrant, but Jade saw it in Asch, and in Luke to a degree as well. If you were captive among enemies, or strangers, then you would be desperate to fit in, desperate for any scrap of kindness. Asch and Luke had already been vulnerable to Van's manipulations, and after something like that?

"Oh, Asch." Natalia embraced him, wanting to comfort him and so sad herself, and he'd wanted to spare her this, and he was weak, and…

Asch found himself reaching out for the only one who had been there, who _understood_. Someone who was just a replica, so who cared if he saw Asch cry? Someone who was just as broken.

Luke had shut down their channel because he knew what he was probably going to have to do: use his power as the terrible weapon that it was, and didn't want anyone to know, anyone to see. Except himself, he remembered that he'd killed, every detail, so they would live in his memory.

In the Planet's Memory.

_What am I?_ Luke wondered. _What kind of monster_ _am I?_ Lorelei was the one Van truly wanted to kill, after all.

_And what kind am I, when I have only the ashes of your power? _A half-monster was still a monster, and Luke might be refined but Asch had been born this way.

But those were really feelings, not words. They were too far gone for words when they clung to each other in a place inside their minds where no one could find them. Except perhaps Lorelei, but he left them alone except for the feeling, when Asch could think, that there was someone else who understood their pain.

They weren't the same person, Luke and he. But they were the same on so many levels that it was terrifying. He'd wanted a replica that was a doll, not a second self with all his human flaws. He'd wanted a perfect himself, a perfect soldier or sacrifice, not a mirror image to look at that was just as broken as he was. He'd wanted to think he was perfect, and Luke's awareness of how flawed he was cut like shards of the broken mirror of Luke's seven years of bad luck.

He couldn't cry in front of Natalia, it would make her sad, but he could cry when only someone equally weak was there to see, and so he was able to cry in her arms and feel how strong her love was, that she rocked him and cried for him. She loved him, and that was why his sadness made her sad. She would do everything she could to fix this, fix him.

He didn't think anyone could, but it was such a relief after trying to do this alone that both of them wanted to help. Found him worth helping.


	4. Tartarus

On Noelle: This game has a huge theme with characters being two-faced. Noelle, as the second playthrough hammered into my head, is one of the little examples they slip past you.

Noelle is constantly cheery, helpful, social, and so on.

And yet she's not in a single skit.

She's communicating with Asch and yet she doesn't tell anyone about this while Natalia, who you'd think Noelle would empathize with, is desperate for news of him.

She's a test pilot, and a fighter pilot. Those are fields in which not having a large enough ego kills. While hubris is one thing lack of confidence is equally deadly.

Her one real 'social interaction' consists of her taking Luke and Tear with her and Mieu, and then leaving the two of them alone while physically restraining Mieu from going to them. This is manipulation. It's matchmaking manipulation, so it passes unnoticed, but she's essentially lying to them by saying they'll hang out together and then... ditching them and not really interacting.

Also, these were her family that got killed in the Sheridan massacre.

Noelle is, frankly, a coldly practical, manipulative, dedicated bitch. She's a bitch in a good cause, but tell that to Natalia when she's worrying herself sick. She's not on the same level as Jade: for one thing, her surface persona is pleasant instead of needling and her efforts are all for the good of the world and the party instead of her own issues, but every time I watch a scene with Noelle the complete dissonance between how she acts and what she's doing hits me harder.

This Noelle seems OOC... in the same way that the real Van seems way too OOC to possibly be real to poor Luke. I'm not saying she's acting per se, although obviously if she stuck around the group enough to be confronted with a worrying Natalia and have to be sympathetic she would be acting, but it's a persona.

If manipulation is the best way to keep them alive and she wants them alive, then so be it.

I have a mask myself, and I only come out from behind it when something major is going down or I'm among people who get me. It's a lot easier to get roused to someone else's defense than my own... I wanted to explore Noelle's character.

Either she's honest with herself about the fact that she's having to be a jerk for the sake of the mission or she's_ really_ being a jerk. And I like Noelle.

-

After Asch and Natalia were safely stowed in the inn it fell to Jade to find out the unpleasant details. He was the adult, after all, and better him than someone with a working heart."Noelle, I doubt he would have revealed anything to Ion, but did Luke tell you anything about what they did to him and Asch?"

"Besides that they tortured them? I didn't really want to hear the details, and he wasn't ready to talk about them." Noelle looked a little green. Baticul, Grand Chokmah, and Daath might have interrogators, but torture was thought of as morally repugnant in Sheridan. The city's traditional method, like Keterburg, for dealing with people who needed to suffer more than just death was to exile them from the city. These days, that meant they took a ship from the nearby port instead of dying of thirst in the desert. Jail sentences took place in the mines, what jail sentences there were. Keterberg's tourist infestation meant it had a crime rate, but they made weapons in Sheridan. Not everyone knew how to use them, of course, and during the recent invasion the Oracle Knights' superior training and element of surprise had allowed them to rack up quite a body count even after the armed resistance got going, but it wasn't a good idea to attempt a burglary someplace where so many valuable inventions were so well-guarded and a cry for help would bring armed neighbors swarming in.

What this meant was that Noelle had no idea about what a skilled torturer could do to someone, especially someone as vulnerable as Luke and Asch were right now. Van betraying both of them, Luke with Akzeriuth and Asch with the replica world, Luke's youth and Asch's extended childlike dependence on Van…

He needed details, because he'd studied torture's effects as part of his military training. So would Asch, certainly. Luke was the one who would have no idea what exactly they would have been doing, unless Asch had told him by their link. Torture worked on the mind, the body was just the way to it, and recognizing the manipulation attempts for what they were was the only way to reduce their effectiveness.

As it was he could only speculate. They had been trying to get both of them to go back to Van. A reasonable way to do that would be to play on Luke's feelings of betrayal and loneliness, as well as guilt. The Luke he had seen before this had happened (or not have happened) would not have done that to Hod, right thing or not.

Luke's self-hatred was a huge weak point. If they had tried to convince him that he simply was that sort of person, who would do what was necessary, and therefore he had no conscience to obey by refusing to help Van destroy the world…

Not to mention that Van had been there for seven years when no one else saw Luke. He had been the only one Luke trusted to guide him, even Guy had failed to qualify to a very real degree. If Anise had betrayed Luke, if everyone would, if no one could be trusted, then the one he could distrust the least was still Van. He knew what Van had been lying to him about: if someone said they cared for him but they were in fact just using him he wouldn't know when they would betray him. By that warped logic, it was Van or no one.

Luke's fear of others, even of_ Ion_, was strong evidence they had tried that. Noelle had made the right move, hopefully, even without understanding why. If Jade hadn't left him alone as she'd ordered, had tried to regain control of Luke, Luke would have seen what he was doing. Letting him go would be far more reassuring, as well as giving him time to get control of himself.

Just like Jade would have to keep Natalia near Asch, he was very likely going to have to keep Guy away from Luke. Guy would be trying hard to show Luke that Luke could trust him. Trying _too_ hard. Jade, on the other hand, had been honest about the fact he was just using Luke from the beginning. He might be able to point out that since Luke already knew that Jade didn't care about him and wasn't genocidal he provided a safe alternative to Van.

The problem was Asch. Jade could make some guesses but as for what hid behind Asch's false front? Some of Asch's weak points were so glaring obvious that a blind man couldn't have missed them, but the other god generals would have known subtler ones, one that Asch might have forgotten to guard.

Love, family love: Asch had thought he'd lost those things or never had them. Natalia should be able to prove that wasn't true, and he was willing to accept her feelings.

Asch would stay with Natalia.

It might end up being Luke that left their group, traveling with Noelle as Asch had with Ginji. The last time they'd worked with Asch Luke had known better than to even try to travel along with him.

Possibly Asch and Natalia would split off? But, sadly, Jade had grown used to the advantages of having two healers. And having a larger group meant they had reserve fighters, so some could rest while others killed the monsters.

He would have to wait until he could examine Luke himself.

…examination. If reading the Score could strain Ion that badly, then Luke…

-

"He's asleep?" Tear peeked in.

"He slept most of the way," Ginji confirmed. "Is there anything you need to know? Because I should get over to the town hall and find out what's going on?"

"How is he?" Guy asked before Jade could.

Ginji grimaced. "I thanked him again for saving me that time, but he just didn't want to talk. I think he might have been faking sleep at first. I mean, fontech running's a lullaby to me, but Asch could never sleep on the Albiore. Too noisy for him, or the wrong kind of noise. I can't sleep in the wilderness: it's too quiet and every little thing sounds like a monster sneaking up on me."

"I don't think he's ever slept on our Albiore, he's usually looking out the window at the view." Keeping her voice quiet, Tear sighed."He looks so…" Lost, alone hurt, "small."

"He's only seven." Guy's face was equally pained. "Just seven… damn Legretta! I'll kill her for this!" Anger, anger was better than helplessness.

Tear didn't have anything to say to that. "Should we wake him up?"

"It would help if you did. The Albiores sometime need some maintenance work we can't do in the field: the crew usually swarms all over it checking for problems as soon as we leave every time we return to Sheridan." They did the same to Noelle's Albiore while the group stayed in the Inn. "They can't start the cabin pressure tests until he's gone."

"Let's take him to the inn," Guy suggested. "He'd be more comfortable there than in a chair like that." He was the first one to outright enter the cabin. "Luke?" He put his hand on Luke's shoulder and shook him gently. "Come on, Luke, wake up."

The point where Luke regained consciousness was dramatic: his whole body tensed although he didn't draw back from the hand. "Guy?"

"Yeah, it's me. Noelle and Asch told us a little about what happened. Are you alright? Yeah, I know, stupid question." Guy gave Luke his space as he sat up. "Luke, I, uh…"

"I'm not afraid that you're going to betray me, Guy. You already told me everything and you chose me over Van even when you had to help me kill him, or try, at least." If only he'd stayed dead. Luke tried to smile. "I'll, I'll be fine."

That was a relief. "I'm afraid that's still up for debate. Sheridan doesn't have the equipment we would need to test if that arte you used had any side effects. Something with that sort of power should have killed you on the spot, Luke."

"I did die using it. That was… I don't want to do that again." Luke shivered.

"How exactly does it work, may I ask?" Jade was asking anyway. "If Ion died in that timeline, then how is he alive now?"

"The body is a replica of Ion's body but Ion is Ion. I… found him and moved him into it. I don't… most of it was just the arte working but I paid attention to Ion. I can't really… There was so much of it, I understood it while I was doing it but now I'm alive again it just doesn't make sense."

"Are the other victims in replica bodies also, including your parents?" The Big Bang effect, in which the original's mind would theoretically migrate to what its fonons considered a part of its own body, provided a mechanism by which that might work. The idea of a soul, a personality existing outside fonons, was laughable and the Big Bang hadn't yet been tested in humans, or he hoped not at least, but it was possible that Ion was Ion, and so on and so forth.

Luke paled. "My parents?"

"Asch said that they had definitely died."

"I didn't know that."

"Jade, you can ask him this stuff later." Guy was as determined to protect Luke from Jade's poking questions as Natalia had been since Asch's breakdown. "Come on, Luke." He reached down and Luke took his hand.

"Where is everyone else?" Luke asked.

"Ion and the Tatlins are back at the inn with Natalia and Asch. Noelle went to Keterberg to bring back Anise." Tear examined him. "Luke, she said that you wanted to talk to her, but are you sure?"

"Not right now, but I need to at some point. I mean, I can't blame her for what she didn't do." Luke's rueful smile and attempt at a joke fell flat. "And I understand why she did it. She didn't know what they would do."

"He looks so fragile," Tear murmured, only somewhat to Jade as they followed Luke and Guy to the Inn. "When I first met him I thought he was shallow, and then I…"

"Some people never come back from it when they're broken. Others are made of stronger stuff." Luke hadn't tried to regain his arrogance after Akzeriuth. He'd showed determination to become someone worthwhile to honor them, and had become someone worthy of Jade's…. respect. "But now that determination itself seems like a shell."

"How he's been since Akzeriuth isn't who he is," Tear told him. "It's who he's trying to be. And the person he tried to be ended up making a mistake like that. Luke couldn't prevent the miasma from returning. I think he tried being a typical noble teenager and it didn't work, he tried being a grown-up and it didn't work, and now he just doesn't know what to do, or who to be."

"The cliché thing would be to say he could try being himself, but no one knows who they are inside." Jade was admittedly working on shaping his own personality. He hadn't been kidding when he'd said his tormenting of them was part of that. Playful barbs were better than contempt. "I suppose finding out he was a replica and his entire life was a deception created by Van means that this is truer for Luke than for most."

"If Noelle had tried to treat the Luke I met first like that he wouldn't have let her no matter how miserable he was. Not just order him around, care for him."

"He only accepted Van's guidance. I understand why, of course, but he's never had a mentor who understood his circumstances and had good intentions." Jade didn't like being reminded of what Professor Nebilim had been to him. "Perhaps Guy can provide that." Now he knew Luke was a replica, at least.

"I feel like it's my fault. I've been trying to force him to be a certain way since Akzeriuth, and… Guy's been right when he keeps telling me that I'm being too hard on him, demanding too much. I'm holding him to the standards an adult should be held to. No, a soldier, and I keep forgetting that he's only seven. He looks seventeen, we thought he was seventeen for so long, and then when we found out he started acting so grown-up so quickly. Too quickly."

"Regardless of whether or not he should… No, in fact he should not have this power and these responsibilities. Asch should, but the world rarely cares for what 'should' be the case. Someone once told me that if the word 'should' came into any sentence there was faulty reasoning involved somewhere, and I've never found a case where that's incorrect. Asch 'should' have died at Akzeriuth, for that matter. Van 'should' have been drowned at birth."

Tear stared at him. "I'm not going to apologize for saying that," Jade informed her. "Just think of what that would have spared us."

"No, it's not that. For a moment there you sounded… angry."

"Did I?" Jade examined himself. "I suppose I am angry."

"What does your wrist have to do with knowing if you're angry or not?"

"There are physiological responses to emotions that I tend to ignore the same way I ignore heat and chill. Along with those emotions themselves. I'm actually angry. How fascinating. I can't remember the last time I felt anger instead if disgust."

"Uh, right…" Tear was backing away slowly, just a bit.

"I must note this down. And figure out what prompted it, of course." Jade sighed. "While the world containing few monsters like myself is a good thing, it makes for an irritatingly limited sample pool."

"You're treating your emotions like an experiment?" Tear thought that was absurd, looking at him like people looked at a ferry wreck, too horrible and wrong to look away.

"Yes? I treat everything like an experiment. Including last night's dinner."

"That was you? I thought that was Asch!"

Jade hadn't actually put anything extra in there except for some traditional seasonings he'd picked up in Keterberg, but he could use the amusement.

-

Guy tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention before he opened the door. "Uh, Luke? Asch is in that room."

"I know." Luke hesitated, though.

"Are you sure you want to see him right now?" Luke didn't look sure. "Natalia's with him, and he was find most of the way here but he broke down awhile ago." And if it had made Asch break down… But Guy wasn't thinking about that now. "He's not going to be in the best mood if someone walks in, you know?" Not that he thought they were going to be doing it. Natalia was a not until the ceremony type: princesses had to be so that their husbands knew the princes were their kids.

Guy was a 21-year-old man with healthy hormones who had yet to lose his virginity. Maybe House Gardios would end up wiped out by Duke Fabre's attack after all, if not by the sword then by the trauma.

Man, this was making him morbid.

"He knows I'm here. He's not going to attack me, Guy." Actually, yes, Guy had been worried. He knew unstable traumatized people: he'd _been_ one. "I just… He has the same power I do, or closer than anyone but Lorelei, and…"

"Misery loves company?"

"It's not… I guess it's like that. And… he was there, Guy. He wasn't very nice during it, but he was _there_."

"While you were being tortured? Doesn't that mean you should avoid him? Until, you know, you start getting over it?"

"I think I need to see him to get over it. He was there with you, at the island, but I really wasn't…" Luke had been out of it. He started to open the door.

"Alright, if you say so." Watching from the door as Luke went over to the bed, silent because it wasn't his place to talk anymore, Guy didn't like what he was seeing.

Luke, wearing white, face so… His name, their name, meant the light of the sacred flame, and Guy had seen what hyperresonance looked like. Luke looked like a ghost, like there wasn't much there but light. Asch? Lying there, not moving or fighting for once since Guy had met him again, he looked like he was already dead, his colors those of coals, embers, and ashes as Luke's were the light given off by a flame. And what happened when that fire ran out of fuel?

Natalia, by comparison, seemed like the sun in the sky, and even though she wasn't happy either how alive she always was made them look even more like corpses next to her. Guy wondered, in that moment, what he must have looked like, chattering and being himself next to a Luke who was barely talking back, trying to cheer up someone with nothing to be cheery about.

Guy ended up having to follow him into the room, if nothing but to do something to get the image of the light fading and the ashes being swept into the dustbin when the fire that had burned within them and now seemed so dim burned out.

For a few moments he saw the flames as his manor burned, after Pere had found him, saw charred bodies and flames rising to the sky and…

His family, his home, Van… He didn't want to lose Luke too.

Luke sat down on the edge of the bed Asch was on, joining Natalia who sat on the other. "Oh, Luke…" She didn't want to lose them both either. The Luke she had loved and the Luke she had seven years with: not both of them, not like this.

Luke hugged her. "We'll…" And he couldn't promise her that they would be okay. He managed to smile for her, but only with his mouth.

She hugged him back, pressing his head against her chin partially so she didn't have to see that smile.

Asch was awake, but not looking at Luke or anything in particular. His eyes wandered over to Guy, but couldn't care enough to focus or to comment.

Luke moved away from Natalia and embraced him next. They seemed to be talking to each other, but Guy and Natalia couldn't hear it. So they ended up just standing vigil, soon joined by Tear and a Jade who still had a stack of papers detailing Sheridan's research into this phenomenon to get through.

They envied him for having a distraction. They could leave, but they couldn't leave Luke, or Luke and Asch in Natalia's case.

-

He should tell the dreck to get off him, the remnants of his stupid pride told him. He really couldn't care. He'd held on to his pride for so long, his crutch, but it had given way and so he lay here. At least Natalia wasn't trying to get him to talk.

Luke was just as miserable as he was, and maybe if misery didn't love company it at least wanted it, unlike just about everything else right now. At least he wasn't the only one the Score had it in for this badly. No, not just the score. Natalia couldn't understand and he'd die fighting to keep her from understanding this. Luke did. But the pain they felt was the same, at root. Identity stolen, used by the person they loved, intended to die, possessing these powers? The same anguish. If it was only one thing, and there were two of them, it didn't seem to overwhelming. He couldn't handle this alone. He couldn't. But… there was someone else.

He'd thought that the replica was a thing and therefore could only be, at best, a tool. But a tool that didn't obey was no tool and if someone wasn't with Asch in this then they were against him, like the rest of the universe. But Luke was a person, and so he had… an ally? A comrade? A friend?

Luke wasn't talking to him either. They both had their eyes closed, since they didn't have the strength to deal with the onlookers and putting up a false front for them or, worse, revealing the truth of how battered and broken they were. Luke already knew: no point in lying to him.

And so their minds clung to each other for comfort, the pain of it lost in the pain they were already feeling.


	5. Aether

_Ugh, Van and Lorelei. Such key characters to all that goes on in this game and so hard to interpret/write._

-

"Uh, Jade?"

"Yes, I noticed." There were just tiny things, but he was good at noting details.

"So it's not just me." Jade decided not to tell Guy that he'd only decided that he wasn't just hearing things when Guy spoke.

"They're visible to you, too?" Natalia and Tear, the two seventh fonists present, exchanged glances.

"Since the light's coming in from that window, there are places that should be in shadow on them that aren't. They look like there's light shining on them too." That was what Guy had seen: what had they?

"There are lots of seventh fonons gathering," Tear explained. "They're not casting an arte, or drawing them in, they're just… gathering."

"I wonder if it's them or Lorelei." Actually, Jade had noticed a third thing. "Listen for a moment, and tell me if you notice anything."

Guy was the first to. "There's too little clanking. The metal sounds like someone tuned it. Not bells, but not just pieces of metal bashing into each other."

"That, and given how fast I read we've been in here for three hours and the sun hasn't set yet." Jade hadn't noticed that until now, but he decided not to tell them that. Convenient: he had piles of raw data to weed through and much of it was written in Sheridan-style shorthand and jargon he needed to puzzle out. He still didn't know what VIB stood for.

"Okay, well that's not normal." Guy looked out for a bit. "Okay, that's not natural." There was a ball hovering in midair.

The light, the sounds, "if we're in a bubble then what we're seeing and hearing has to be provided. If we're moving at that speed relative to the world then so little light would be coming in that it would be dark in here and all of the sounds would be too low-pitched to hear. That would explain the odd light and sound phenomena: they're created by this arte for our benefit." Fascinating.

"Luke?" Natalia shook his shoulder a bit.

It was Asch who answered. "I just… wanted some time." And Asch couldn't afford that, the world couldn't afford that, since Van hadn't been present on Feres when the facility there had met its timely end.

"I'll stay here with you," Natalia promised. "With you both."

"Is it second-order hyperresonance?" In a normal hyperresonance two fonists needed to be present, but only one of them needed to direct it. Or sometimes no one directed it. Although perhaps Luke's desire to get the assassin away from his teacher and himself out of the manor had been the driving force behind their arrival in Tataroo Valley. Normally hyperresonances led to extremely powerful healing spells or explosions. Perhaps two hyperresonance capable people could produce one even if only one of them was directing it?

"I can't do it without him, but he could do it on his own." Asch seemed neutral about the idea that he was weaker than Luke, or no, not neutral, simply not outraged. Of course the universe hated him, it wasn't something to get upset about.

That viewpoint was progress, in fact. Or rather, the universe didn't have it in for people, it simply didn't care. People needed to get over that and move on with their lives instead of thinking that the world, in the form of the Score, cared about them and would therefore ensure they led good lives in the long run without any work involved.

"One of Van's other facilities is hidden in Ortion Caverns." Luke knew that from having put the world back. "I need to do something about it before he starts production there."

"Can't we just send the army to destroy everything there?" Natalia pleaded. "You shouldn't have to do this to yourself, Luke."

"I'll do it," Asch told him. "You've… I wasn't the one at Akzeriuth, and I need to pull my share of the weight. How do you know all that, about the facility?"

"I… I can't really understand most of what the arte did, but I was paying attention to you guys, and Ion, and what might bring back the miasma. Oh, and Van's alive."

"You couldn't have fixed that for us?" If he'd chosen to let Van live Jade would be very, very worried.

"It doesn't work that way. That arte is all or nothing." Luke turned his face away: asking about Van had been pushing it, Jade acknowledged. At least Luke knew his own limits and wasn't pushing them too hard. "You can leave, if you want."

"We'll stay," Natalia told him. The others, her gaze told them, had better not leave.

Once they knew the truth the masquerade of a normal place, or time, disappeared. The light was golden and there was faint singing on the edge of hearing. It was almost hypnotizing, and Jade considered borrowing one of Tear's knives and using it to keep himself awake, if something that drastic was necessary. He knew where those knives had been, after all.

"They're asleep," Natalia reported finally.

"It's not the first fonic hymn: it's not any of the ones I know." Tear smiled. "They're so cute, curled up like that."

"Does it do something?" Guy asked.

"I think it's keeping this place… outside of the rest of time. Safe. It's like being cradled." As a descendant of Yulia Tear was far more sensitive to Lorelei than any of them, as the incident when she had been possessed proved. Tear's eyes were closed as she listened to it, and she looked angelic, especially with her hands clasped like that. It wasn't the most reassuring image for someone dying of miasma poisoning. "I couldn't use it as a fonic arte, but… I want to learn this song."

They were quiet and let her listen. In this air it seemed almost like a last request.

"I think I've heard it before, somewhere," she murmured. They watched, hypnotized, as she began singing quietly, becoming part of the unseen chorus. Then she stopped. "That's what it means. How wonderful." Now she sang it as an arte, fonons appearing around her in a glyph.

Nothing happened. "It's not an arte that's useful in battle," Tear told them, opening her eyes. "It's just something that brings back good memories, and good dreams. Van used to sing this for me as a lullaby: it helped me remember. It's the seventh fonic hymn."

"That might be exactly what the doctor ordered." Natalia stroked Luke's hair, and he didn't flinch. Daring, she tried the same with Asch, who only made a soft noise. She muffled a delighted giggle and nudged him, pushing him into Luke a bit.

This prompted a chorus of, "Five more minutes, Guy," that made the ex-manservant in question start to laugh out loud.

"While it's still around six o'clock outside I think it's somewhere around midnight in terms of our time." Was Lorelei making time in here go faster or applying a Time Stop to the entire planet? Most likely the former, it would take less power. "Are any of you tired?"

"I am, but it might just be that I used to hear this song and then go to sleep." Old habits died hard.

"Man, you're right. So much has been happening that now that I think about it…" Guy yawned, followed by Natalia. "There are only two beds, though." No one raised the idea of leaving and using the inn's other room as planned.

"Tear and I can share that one, and you can share with Luke and Asch since they're hardly taking up any space," Natalia decreed. "But there's not going to be enough room for Jade if you're there also."

Guy looked at Jade, hoping he wouldn't have to sleep on the bare floor.

"I'll be fine, the chair is reasonably comfortable." That, and he was planning to keep watch _because_ this place was so safe, or seemingly so at any rate. Everyone seemed to be looking at him suspiciously. Oh, yes, they were expecting a barbed comment. He decided to just smile and worry them. He'd fulfill their expectations when they woke up.

They were fast asleep more quickly than was natural. Jade debated jabbing his palm with a pen so that the pain would keep him awake, since he'd neglected to borrow one of Tear's knives, but eventually he too succumbed.

-

It hadn't taken Van long to realize that he had sped up instead of the world slowing down. Lorelei had been awakened by something, but at least whatever it was kept it too occupied to break free, or even pay attention to what Van was doing.

Since he held it captive inside his body he could tell what it felt and he couldn't think of anything that could inspire such a desire to nurture in the mind of the Score except Asch. Had he found an arte that would allow him to awaken Lorelei and free him from Van's control?

Van's personal time had sped up as a side effect of Lorelei doing whatever it was so quickly in the real world. At least it meant that, from his perspective, the planet storm slowed to a crawl and he was able to easily escape the core.

Something very strange had happened five days ago, and then a day or so ago the core had stopped shaking. Since he couldn't interact with the world like this he decided his most urgent priority was finding out what Lorelei was up to. Following the flow of Lorelei's power led him to Sheridan's inn.

Trying to get inside made Lorelei start to wake up and realize what its captor was up to. _My perfect isofons... Please, don't… _Starting to sing the Grand Fonic Hymn, the way he had called Lorelei and imprisoned it, forced it into submission and Van was able to open the door.

What a peaceful scene. And yet, why would Lorelei go to such lengths only for this?

True, he could hear Lorelei singing the seventh fonic hymn, but he'd expected something related to the ongoing battle Asch and the replica were fighting to stop Van from freeing this corrupt world of Lorelei and the Score.

Mystearica and Meryl occupied the bed nearest the door, and his sister looked like she always had asleep: a little angel. His spies had discovered that she was dying from miasma poisoning, and he could see a few of the signs already. Why couldn't she just join him? Why did she have to do this to herself in order to stop him? Did the Score have to take away all of his family?

However, Van had a hard time believing that the Necromancer had ever looked simply happy. What memories was the hymn calling forth?

He'd stood watch as Gailardia slept, ages ago. This wasn't that smile. This was Guy's smile, the fondness Van had seen sometimes when he looked at the replica.

Van thought that Lorelei wasn't manipulating them. Frankly, Lorelei's thoughts were only for two in this room, two who slept curled up together like the little children they had never been, at least not at the same time. Unlike the others there were slight frowns on their faces, lines of pain around their eyes. Asch's treatment by his family, Luke's nightmares of Akzeriuth? Van had heard of them from the reports from Anise that Mohs passed along on occasion. Or was there more to it than that?

Lorelei almost fought him for control when he tried to step closer, desperate to protect them. "Is that what this is about?" Van frowned. "Why now, Lorelei?"

_The Light of the Sacred Flame cast the arte on this place: I am doing naught but sing to them. One who would seize glory, please leave them be! The regretful one tormented them, in a time that was not, and they are near death. Please, I beg of you!_

"Near death?" He needed Asch, although, in fact, now that he had Lorelei's power he might not anymore…

_They possess my power, and that includes the power to heal, and therefore the power to kill. Until the time that was not they did not have the awareness to cast artes like this and therefore were not connected enough to their power to have this risk, but if their hearts despair and decide that this life is not worth the strength it takes to remain in this world then they will depart it for the fon belt, or worse, destroy the memories that cause them such pain. This could happen even if their minds refuse to give in to their hearts' desires._

In other words, if their death wish grew strong enough they could die even if they refused to give into the desire to end their own lives and fought for survival. Van had… thought about the idea, as a child, after what had happened to his parents and Hod. Yet he had been needed. After Eldrant was finished. After it was over. Not until then, he owed it to those he had killed. He had to atone for what he had done to them, to his homeland.

When Van did not answer Lorelei went on. _Please, turn your anger on me, son of Yulia, not these children, this fragment of my soul and the one that forged him. _

"Fragment of your soul?"

Lorelei realized it had said too much.

"You're right, he is. Now why didn't I realize that myself?"

_He did not understand his nature either, oh one who would seize glory! He fights you for this world, not for me. To him I am nothing but the one who causes his pain, possessed his friend when I wished to speak to him without causing pain, and caused him and the light of the sacred flame to have this accursed power and fate. _And that hurt Lorelei. _You caused his life as the light of the sacred flame to be a lie. Because he is akin to me his humanity is also yet another falsehood. Please, hate me, I am guilty of all that you hate me for, but he is but a child! _

"He is precious to you." Lorelei was capable of caring? "All the more reason to do this." He drew his sword slowly, focusing on the action, forcing Lorelei to watch.

Lorelei cried out. Only Van could hear him, since he'd locked the sentience inside Van's own mind so that he couldn't alert them. No one heard it except Van, and he should have gloried in that cry. He'd tormented Lorelei as much as he could manage, and never gotten more out of it but its constant misery. It was resigned to its fate, the world's fate, and he couldn't force it to hate itself if it already did.

Two thousand years of imprisoned agony endured were cast aside for that cry. Lorelei clung to hope that it and the world would live, but knew that it was an empty hope, simply going through the motions. It had known that Luke and Asch were doomed. And yet…

And yet it loved them, and Van could feel the world start to end.

If its children were to be murdered in their sleep because of it then the entity that had survived two thousand years of imprisonment, watching the pact it had made with Yulia cause countless deaths, the entity that had endured all that did not, in its heart, want to live.

It wanted to save them, but it couldn't. Unless someone else sang the Hymn wanting it to escape and canceled out Van's order for it to stay imprisoned it had to obey him, and unless the key was used to take it out it couldn't escape. Even if one or the other happened it was useless. If the hymn was sung without the key Lorelei still couldn't get out, and if the key was found without the hymn Lorelei would be forced to return to Van even if freed.

If it died now it would take Van with it. "Stop! I won't do it now." He removed his hand from his sword, still not all the way out of his sheath.

…_Truly? _

"I have intended to spare Asch from the beginning, you know that." Luke, however, had been made to die and now had to die.

…_If he lives, that is enough. _

"You're not going to try to bargain with me for Luke's life?" He couldn't kill him now, obviously, but as soon as he could he would.

_What do I have to bargain with? My blessed scion is… he does not wish to steal his forger's life away a second time. He wishes to save this world, but… perhaps the light of the sacred flame's life is all this fate will permit him to preserve. All that my mistake will, unless this fragment can do what I cannot and destroy the Score that binds me and this world. _And Lorelei had no hope of that.

Van was a seventh fonist and Lorelei was within his own body. Lorelei's self-hate and the ensuing self-destruction was causing serious harm with every passing second even if Lorelei would live, for now. He had to get out of here so the thing would calm down.

_Thank you. _Lorelei resumed singing and retreated back to almost-sleep tamely as a sign of that thanks, a small mercy because it would have been a struggle to force him into that state in Van's present condition.

He almost wanted to force Lorelei to stop singing that song, but he wasn't going to push while he was this weak.

Even though it reminded him of when he had sung for his baby sister, the child he had wanted to protect from the consequences of his sins just as futilely as Lorelei wished to preserve those two.


	6. Hemera

It wasn't all better when Asch woke up, and he doubted it would ever be. But at least he'd had some sleep without nightmares and he had someone to hold on to. His family had betrayed him by failing to see through the imposter, or so he'd thought, Van had betrayed him: he'd thought he could trust no one. No man was an island, as much as he'd wanted to be.

He'd lost sight of what he was fighting for. No, he'd been fighting out of vengeance, or more out of spite, really. What was there worth preserving? At least he could stop Van's schemes, but what would he do afterwards? He'd wanted to go back, but hearing that the replica wanted to had made him not want to, and Natalia was… Natalia had meant too much for too long and the person wasn't the ideal. He'd talked Ginji and the Dark Wings' ears off about her, but it was more questions than answers.

He had the answer to the most important question. Natalia still loved him, in whatever manner. She wasn't horrified by what he had become and she wasn't angry at him. There was hope.

He could marry her. Go back to Baticul and be king in a world without the Score. Have his life back. He didn't know how likely that was, but it was a possibility now. He had a future, one that he could turn aside from if he wished to but he had a future, if he wanted it.

He wouldn't be stealing Luke's future, either. Luke was too soft-hearted: he'd make a terrible king, and if all else failed he could, as Guy was pointing out, come live with him in Grand Chokmah and become the heir to House Gardios, since if Guy never got over his fear of women _someone _would have to inherit the manor, the few remaining islands, and the other properties in Malkuth attained via marriage.

Although physically Luke was only four years younger than Guy, so it was probably Luke's kids that would inherit.

They woke up refreshed, which meant they couldn't get to sleep that night and ended up talking, just talking, about the future, and possibilities, and hopes. That, and the past, memories that might be reclaimed. The promise he'd made to Natalia. He'd sat next to her, holding hands, and he'd felt a bit embarrassed at first but she was happy and no one commented on it. Three more years until he came of age… He was growing weaker, but if something like this had happened perhaps there was, no, there had to be hope.

"As soon as Noelle gets here with Anise we're heading to Belkend. I need to examine both of you for any possible side effects as soon as possible."

Luke shook his head. "We're fine, and so is Tear."

"I thought you said you couldn't make changes like that." Tear wasn't going to rejoice so soon.

"I died in the… It gets really complicated, but I transferred the poisoned fonons into my body when it died. Ion did the same thing to save you, in the future that wasn't, which is how I got the idea," Luke told her. "I wouldn't have thought of it on my own. But they're gone, Tear. It'll take awhile for the damage to go away, and you really shouldn't operate any passage rings since you're vulnerable to it, but you'll be fine." He smiled at her, happy that he'd managed to save her from what she'd had to go through (partially) because of him.

Tear smiled back fondly, that same sort of fondness that Guy displayed.

The same sort of bone-deep relief that came from Natalia's presence at his side echoed from Luke when Guy and Tear demonstrated that they didn't hate him for Feres, despite the reminder of Akzeriuth.

It wasn't hurting anymore, in fact it hadn't since Asch had opened himself to Luke in those horrible moments on the Albiore. Luke was always there, in the back of his mind. He had someone to lean on if he needed it and someone who needed him, the way Natalia did, and him alone. Others might mistake Luke for Asch, but Luke knew that he wasn't Asch, now. Luke saw him and him alone.

Was this what having a brother was like? Someone who you might not like but who would back you up no matter what? Or closer than brothers: they had never shared a home but they'd shared a body, after Akzeriuth.

To his fonons, once Luke had been synchronized he'd almost seemed like a body part. There was his arm, and his other arm, and his legs, and his idiot replica. Although his legs didn't walk around on their own and ignore instructions from his brain. He felt what was going on with him unless he deliberately walled him off. When he did it was like the phantom pain he'd had once before his arm was regrown back at base. It hadn't been there, but it should be there, it should be hurting, and so it felt as though it was.

He knew that Luke was his own person, it was hard to stomp around in his mind and not recognize that (although he'd refused to acknowledge it for a long time), but replica data extraction meant that the fonons that were Luke's core had been taken from him. He was part of Asch in a very real sense and the relief of having him attached again was as dramatic as that of having his arm back.

No wonder Luke wouldn't fight back, not after he'd regained his sanity. Luke hadn't been fed lies by Van. Luke had recognized that Asch was… important, and that harming Asch would be no better, or perhaps worse, than harming himself. Luke would never betray him. It would be cutting off his nose to spite his face. Of course, Asch had once had a great deal of spite towards his face.

They would go look for that replication facility in the morning, but for now Guy helped Jade sort through fontech jargon and Tear cooked while they all… talked. About nothing in particular, the subject changing randomly. He wasn't the center of attention anymore, the mysterious intruder they tried to dissect. He was part of them. He had a place in the sun again.

He still hurt, but he realized that he was also… happy.

-

After Lorelei stopped singing and returned completely to sleep ordinary time resumed and Van was finally able to talk to Arietta, who he'd found circling the bowl that Feres had been turned into. There was a crater centered on where their facility had been. That had to be the hyperresonance he sensed, but what about the major event that had occurred before then?

Arietta was glad to see him and had no idea what happened. It had only been luck that she was away from Feres at the time, it seemed. Their alternate meeting place was the Tower of Rem, and that was where he found an excited Sync. "Replicas! Three-fourths of the people I just tried to get replica data from were already replicas, and they had memories going back all their lives! It's got to have something to do with that huge…" Sync tried to find words. "That huge thing that no one felt happen but I'm still feeling the aftershocks from!"

"Calm down, Sync. I sensed it as well, and it seems Asch has learned a time arte that affects Lorelei as well. That allowed me to escape the core sooner than I expected. Legretta, did you capture Asch or Luke at any point while I was away?"

"No, Commandant. He successfully eluded us, and we let the replica and his comrades have a false sense of security as you ordered through Sync. They managed to discover that we were still active and recently gathered again, but they haven't been able to discover anything important."

"You're wrong, Legretta! My home is gone! Asch or that replica destroyed Feres!"

Legretta and Largo paled, and most likely Sync as well. "What?"

"I went there first. All of the buildings are leveled and there's nothing left alive. I found Arietta circling it. It was definitely a hyperresonance. I doubt that Luke would be able to manage something on so large a scale since as the replica his powers are weaker… or are they?" Given what he had just found out… "Legretta, have you done anything that might be described as tormenting Asch, or possibly both of them?"

"Not to my knowledge."

"Lorelei tends to be overly poetic, but it said that the regretful one had tormented them until they were near death, although he seemed to be talking about despair as well. He said that it happened in the 'time that was not,' although you don't seem to know what that means either."

"Lorelei's as cryptic as the Score." Sync scowled. "So what's with all the replicas?"

"I have no idea." And he wasn't going to wake up Lorelei to ask. "Did you put it in a report? I want all the reports you wrote while I was gone, right away. Eldrant is meant to be a replica world: if that is happening on its own somehow then the Score might be fulfilled in a way that prevents it from being overturned. We _must _discover the cause of that: everything else comes second!"

While they were collecting information (many of his soldiers and Arietta herself turned out to have been turned into replicas, or replaced by them), another hyperresonance occurred near Sheridan, taking out Dist's old facility, Sync soon confirmed.

After their invasion Sheridan had been turned into a near fortress. The telescopes they had could be used to search the skies, sea and desert for intruders quite well and the town walls were well suited to handling the occasional nasty monster that wandered over from the Meggiora Highlands, not to mention that their ancestors had left defenses behind. Being able to defend themselves had allowed them to keep the Kimlascan military out of their city and in the nearby port.

Baticul and 'Grand' Chokmah had broken free from Ispanian control ages ago, when Ispania's power dwindled as the area it was located in became marshland and the city sank. Sheridan's Citadel had never been conquered by the empire. The residents of Keterberg had let the winter and the monsters do most of their fighting for them until the Score had forced both of them to join Malkuth.

What this meant was that the only way into Sheridan was with an army. With its rear along sheer cliffs, another flank protected by a steep hill, and the antique flamethrowers and other 'surprises' mounted into the walls (once they were restored to working order, at least, and he doubted they weren't being readied as he thought), it would take an army with a fleet of landships. Kimlasca hadn't conquered Sheridan, they'd thrown Malkuth out of the port and Sheridan had surrendered without a fight, winning concessions with that and by making it clear that they very well could put up a fight if it wasn't made worth their while.

After that Duke Fabre had turned Baticul into almost a second Sheridan, because no military commander liked having an unpredictable near-neutral control both their supply of weapons and all the best toys. That piece of aftermath of the Hod War had been to Van's advantage, at least. Sheridan wanted nothing to do with fomicry but the class rivalry had meant that Belkend leapt at it.

The good side of that was that he wouldn't have to break into Sheridan to find out what was going on. Replica research meant Belkend. That meant that the replica and his group would travel there at some point to find out what was going on.

Mass application of the Big Bang effect was out of the question. They would never create a plan centered around that. Van's replicas were almost but not quite perfect isofons to keep it from happening, in fact.

By the time he got there, however, they'd been and gone.

Once upon a time, Arietta the Wild's flying monsters had given Van unparalleled mobility. With the advent of the Albiores all that had changed.

Perhaps cracking the nut that was Sheridan a second time might be necessary after all. There was no other way to get their replica data, for one thing. The city was conforming quite firmly to Ion's edict forbidding further readings. It was almost admirable, that an entire city was so happy to throw aside the shackles of the Score.

However, they might be refusing to hear it read but it still controlled them, as it would all until Eldrant rose.

Eldrant would be poorer without the replicas of people like that.

At least now that he was out of the core the planet storm was slowly gaining strength to compensate for the loss of the mass of fonons that was Lorelei.

-

"Van must have escaped from the core." Luke wasn't happy.

"So we'll have to wait until he makes his move." Looking at Luke's memory of Lorelei's words in hope he'd find a clue to the location of the Jewel had let them find out that Luke's shock hadn't just been at hearing the voice again, it had been the Jewel being thrown into his fonons. Luckily that was reasonably easy to fix, and Luke hadn't destroyed Feres by drawing fonons to himself the way Asch still needed to. Luke's scream had made the planet resonate when he used the time arte: Luke could send out fonons 'pitched' to cause other fonons to hyperresonate until the structure they were part of disintegrated. In fact, the Jewel made it easier, the way the sword, which collected fonons, made Asch's method of gathering fonons together the way conventional fonists did easier, so they'd tested to see if the Key could be put together and then taken it apart.

And if the jewel was hidden in Luke's body then there was no way one of Van's spies could see them walking around with it and know they had the one thing that could threaten Van and free Lorelei.

"I don't think the Tartarus will hold that long," Jade told them. "We have two days and a week. Two days until the damage becomes irreversible, a week until the Tartarus falls apart. We need another method of keeping the miasma from returning."

Luke frowned, looking scarily thoughtful. "This is happening because Van took Lorelei from the core, right? I think…"

"Luke, that is not an option."

"What isn't an option?" Guy asked. "Because we don't have that many options right now."

"I don't know, I was just trying to make sure I had it straight." Luke and everyone stared at Jade now.

"Thinking. I am hereby retracting your permission to think." Good save, Jade congratulated himself.

"Don't talk to him like that," Tear protested.

"And don't try to fake me out like that either. You had that expression Dist always has."

Jade stared at Asch. "Excuse me?"

"You two really did grow up together. Answer the question, old man." Asch refused to get sidetracked.

"If Luke is a second manifestation of Lorelei, then Luke might theoretically be able to substitute for Lorelei in the core."

"Oh, is that all?" Luke seemed puzzled. "How is that a bad thing? I'll just bring some supplies and camp out in the Tartarus."

"It's a bad idea because we won't know if it worked or not until after the seal is broken and you're possibly lost in the core."

"Hey, Van and Sync were there for ages and they were fine."

Asch had a thought. "Luke, your hyperresonance is stronger and more precise than mine, even if when you try to do my style of hyperresonance you aren't very good at it. You might be more valuable here than 'camping out.' Could I substitute?"

"No. Luke might work, might, but while your frequency is that of Lorelei's you're made up of first through seventh fonons, like a normal seventh fonist, instead of the seventh alone. You _might _be able to convince the planet storm there's a healthy equilibrium, but I wouldn't bet on it. If it weren't for the fon belt's depletion changing the balance factors the Tartarus would be gone already. Where on Auldrant is Van? Is he simply waiting until the miasma returns?" Jade tapped the calculations. "These numbers don't make any sense. Either we're missing a lot of seventh fonons or the planet should have shaken itself apart long before the planet storm was created. Without its artificial production of seventh fonons there wouldn't be a healthy level… Oh yes, the miasma." The miasma was, tests showed, seventh fonon with very, very warped memory particles. They were lucky it wasn't able to form a sentience of its own. Jade did _not _want to encounter the aggregate intelligence of what was most likely the fragmented, tormented selves of the victims of the war Yulia had ended, prevented somehow from returning to the fon belt in peace.

He had no intention of telling Tear she'd grown up surrounded by the angry dead, too far gone to think the way the sword they had encountered three times, once in the ruins of Feres, had. And to think people had once thought ghosts were a myth! No wonder healing artes and panacea bottles did absolutely nothing against miasma poisoning. It wasn't a poison, it was a curse.

"What if we both went?" Asch smiled, now. "He needs the seventh fonon production to create Eldrant. He would have to come to us."

Jade blinked, then smiled. "That would certainly be a pleasant change."

"We found the key, Tear can use the Grand Fonic Hymn… all we need is the guest of honor." Or dishonor, in Van's case.

Luke frowned. "What about afterwards, though? Either we turn off the Planet Storm, Lorelei returns to the core, or the miasma comes back."

"Could Lorelei get rid of the miasma?" Jade asked.

Shaking his head, Luke told him that, "I checked to see if I could, remember? Lorelei has to be better at it than I am, but since I used up so much of the fon belt there's just not enough power."

"How long would it take for the fon belt to replenish itself naturally?" Luke looked blank. Yes, how should he know that? It had never, in Luke's experience, acted normal, and even if it did the answer would involve complicated math. Either that or instinct, perhaps, but it appeared they weren't that lucky. "If the fonstones of the Score are all destroyed and keeping it going ceases to be such a drain on the fonon, it's possible that Lorelei might eventually be able to get rid of the miasma. I don't know how long it would take and I can't find out, we don't have the data, but less than two thousand years, certainly."

"So we have a plan?" Luke looked around. "Should we let Van figure out where we are on his own, do we need someone to stay here, how do we get the Albiore there now that the outer lands cover the Quiphoth…"


	7. Gaia

"We'll probably have to fly in through the Radiation Gate." There was a knocking on the door. "What is it?"

"Approaching landships. Malkuth and Kimlascan designs, the outdated ones they donate to the Oracle Knights." Ginji appeared to have run here, out of breath. "According to the detector they're replicas."

Everyone started putting away whatever they had been looking over. "How far away?"

"Approaching by sea. We spotted some coming over the horizon. Three groups, ten landships each, and probably more groups on the way. We reactivated the mine system, but modern hulls are stronger. It will probably take twenty to take down a single ship."

"You have two thousand of them, right?" Guy had been keeping track of Sheridan's fontech for the group. It wasn't like they could have made him_ not_ pay attention to it.

"No, only about 1600 are still operational. And they're not mobile. Once they clear a channel they can bombard us from outside the reach of the city's guns. We have some upgraded, and they shouldn't know that for sure, but that bastard would have planned this out. This might just be a test run, but according to Asch the Oracle Knights know about everything in the old defense system." Asch nodded, confirming Ginji's statement. "Which was how they were able to cut us off from the control panels when they invaded. We've moved them, but…"

"What's with all the flashing red lights?" Anise asked when they got outside, taking their cue from Ginji and running. "They're giving me a headache."

"They're the alarm system. Sirens are too noisy."

As if to explain why sirens were a bad idea Aston's voice came over the loudspeaker. "Attention, all residents! Landships of series twenty-three to five are approaching from all directions! Total so far is 400 ships."

"400?!" Guy paled.

"Well, he was planning to replicate all of Hod." So this was what he had been up to. Jade was impressed.

"They are replicated vessels and almost certainly under the command of Ex-commandant Grants. All militia to battle stations, all children to blast shelters," Sheridan occasionally had fifth fonon devices start to go out of control. This led to a construction style favoring thick walls, thin roofs, and deep cellars. The fact that helped with the heat was a bonus. "Everyone else, make yourselves useful."

"Where are you taking us?" Luke asked Ginji.

"Out of town. If we don't get the Albiores up now we won't be able to get them up intact."

"But," Luke protested.

"He's right. We can't focus enough to use hyperresonance if we're being fired at. If we're high up out of range then we can take out the landships." And, Asch knew, get out of there and abandon Sheridan if they had to, but that wasn't the best idea to put in front of Luke.

"And they can't put up Emelia's Folly until we're up."

"Emelia's Folly?" Why was something with a name like that so important, Natalia wondered.

"It's the fourth fonon-based roof Professor Emelia created a hundred and fifty years ago. It was meant to cool the city, unfortunately the water overhead just made it hotter, like a greenhouse," Guy explained. "They keep it around because if you half-activate it then it makes an artificial rainstorm."

"It's great during festivals," Ginji confirmed. "And it's also a shield. Emelia grew up during the last serious war Sheridan was in, and her stuff's always multipurpose. She was a genius, except when it came to the sixth fonon. It won't block the big stuff all the way, but at least it'll reduce momentum or weaken the arte on the way through."

"Intriguing. And I thought Grand Chokmah had done everything that was possible with water-based defenses."

Ginji snorted. "Who do you think they stole the ideas from?"

"Point taken," Jade acknowledged.

"You guys use fonic artes. That uses up way too much of your manpower. We have the fontech do the grunt work for us."

Jade refrained from commenting that this meant they had fewer trained fonists, and a fontech user was helpless without a machine. A fonist _was_ the machine.

Finally they were at the hanger door. "Noelle!"

"Ready!" Noelle's Albiore had stronger jets and was more maneuverable: that was what would count here.

"Go, I can't get the III up until she's out of the launch bay." Of all the luck! They should have known better then to upgrade them both at once, even if it was faster that way.

"Come on, Ion!" Ion still wasn't up to running flat-out this far. Anise was going to have to fix that, she noted absently as she hauled him along so all his tired legs had to do was lift up and down to keep up.

-

Asch cursed as he lost focus and had to get rid of the hyperresonance only half-charged. "Noelle, can't you hold steady?!"

"Not unless you want Glomietta's pets to get us," Anise retorted as she finished an arte. She hurriedly began to cast another.

"Those hresvelgrs can go up higher than the Albiore can!" Noelle swerved again to avoid yet another dive. "And if they hit us coming from that high up they'll be smashed, but we might be too!"

"I'm starting to feel sick," Luke did look a bit green, "and I don't think a panacea bottle would help. I can't use hyperresonance like this, it's just not safe."

Tear took a break from casting Judgment. Normally artes couldn't distinguish between friend and foe on such a large scale, but Yulia's fonic hymns were different. "Are you alright?" She took one of the fruit cocktails Guy was kept busy passing out and started casting again.

"I'll live, but I'm not going to be useful."

"_You're_ not? I can't use Mystic Cage: it affects the entire battlefield and that includes Sheridan." Jade had his overlimit active anyway, for the boost, even though he had to concentrate so that his Thunder Blades wouldn't activate it by accident. "And none of us are doing much good here at all. Three, four," Jade corrected as Asch began to cast, "fonists with attack artes against a real army?"

"How are they doing?" Noelle asked Natalia awhile later.

Their lookout did her job. "They took out five more ships, the roof is still up over three-fourths of the city and they're still firing the same amount as last time you asked."

"That had to be a lucky hit that took down a quadrant. Either that, or…"

Natalia gasped. "Another quarter of the shield just went down!"

"Damn it!" They must have gotten an infiltrator, possibly one of the god-generals, into the city. There was no one in Sheridan who would be much of a match for Sync, the most likely choice.

"I am quite impressed. Van's armada is down to around forty ships." Of course, when they were populated by disposable replicas Van could afford to use wasteful tactics in exchange for speed. Malkuth's navy would still be trying to clear away the mines enough to come into firing range safely by the time Belkend's navy arrived. Programmed, mindless replicas would just sail straight ahead into what destroyed the previous ship if ordered to. Three hundred of that armada had been deliberately sacrificed to destroy the mines and other defenses.

"That monster threw most of those people away." Noelle might not know war but she lived and breathed safety. "It'll get harder once he starts taking us seriously."

"I wish I knew a homing arte," Anise complained. "Those damn birds just get out of the way too fast!"

"Colonel, what are our odds?" Noelle asked as the ship spun around hard enough only AD skills kept the casters on their feet.

"I thought you'd be scorched rubble by… two hours ago. You're doing amazing well, for amateurs." But now Van had done everything he could possibly get away with using wasteful methods to accomplish, most of Sheridan's nasty tricks were used up, and forty landships of fanatical troops would overrun St. Binah, Malkuth's citadel city, quite easily.

"We test the stuff before we send it out, and those models aren't made anymore for good reasons." They knew the weak points. "We're not doing any good here. If we retreated, then hopefully some of them would follow us, at least." That was the right choice to make, Noelle knew, even if she didn't like it. "Thank you." For trying.

Luke managed to smile despite feeling really seasick. "Hey, at least we're slowing them down, even if only a bit, and that buys time for Ginji to fetch Belkend's navy." Sheridan Port's Kimlascan forces had done very well, with the help of tactics and mine locations sent to them from the city through coded fireworks, but eventually they'd fallen under the sheer numbers.

"They won't make it for another eight hours."

"Noelle…"

"I saw it, Natalia." Another quadrant of Emelia's Folly had fallen.

"If only we'd stayed there!" Tear lamented.

"I think we could get there," Luke told them. "But not while we're moving so much."

"Teleportation?" Luke's nod confirmed Tear's guess: he was trying to avoid opening his mouth.

"Out of the question." Jade's voice was firm. "We can't risk losing you. You might be able to get in and take out the possible infiltrator, but with that sort of bombardment going on you're not going to be able to get out."

"We could send some of you." Asch looked them over.

"I'm going." Anise didn't like leaving Ion, but, "It's Sync, I know it is." And if anyone was going to kill him…

"You'll need a healer: I'll go." Tear sat down, winded, having cast her final arte for now.

"Luke and Asch need to come to the Tartarus, myself as well so I can… No. I'm better at theory but this is a matter of reading instruments. Guy, you and Natalia watch them until we get there." A party of three should be fine, they'd fought them before, and Tear was the better healer, since Natalia was an archer by training with seventh fonic artes meant to act in support of that, not primarily a fonist. Her fonic artes were meant to compensate for the disadvantages of using a long-ranged weapon in melee combat in the classic Lanvaldear style.

Jade had studied ancient battles featuring companies of those archers, during the beginning of the kingdom of Kimlasca-Lanvaldear. Fonists rarely had good physical defenses to begin with, and with the addition of scare shot to lower them further, resist to raise the archers' fonic defense, and the ability to heal themselves and the Kimlascan troops acting as meat shields Belkend's forces had been mowed down like wheat during Engave's harvest in the war that conquered it. Sadly, or luckily for Malkuth, the Order tended to view seventh fonists as its future members, so once the kingdom had become less military-oriented the style had started to die out.

Single archers were quite formidable, especially as snipers, but the Kimlasca-Lanvaldear alliance was the most effective infantry combination in the Outer Lands' recorded history.

"Why aren't we swerving anymore?" Luke, lying on the floor now, was the first to notice.

"I'm already out of range," Noelle reported.

"Come on." Asch walked over to Luke. "Just raise your power, I'll direct it. You've only been on the Albiore and the ferry. I've been on ships in storms for years, so I'm used to it."

"Alright." Luke closed his eyes gratefully. "I thought you only needed hyperresonance for this, not two of us."

"We're not in top shape, and we have more control this way. You three, stand over there together." They complied, and the fonons engulfed them.

-

"Do you think they'll be alright?" Luke stared out at the core. He hadn't had time to sightsee last time they were here.

"I'm heading back now," Noelle told them. "They should be fine, Jade will make sure Aston knows they're there so they won't get caught up in it if…"

"If what?" Natalia prompted.

"Do you seriously think the town leaders would use that?" Asch's eyes widened.

"Not unless they have to. And there are several other options first. The guard fon machines outside the city would be allowed in despite buildings getting smashed way before that happened."

"What's that?" Guy realized something. "We can't let Van get his hands on the plans for the Albiore. If he can replicate the flightstones…"

"They can't be replicated for the same reason replicas don't have their originals' memories, so don't worry about that." Landships were bad enough. An armada of replicated Albiores would be a nightmare.

"Two words, Guy. Fonon. Sentience."

"What?" Noelle was shocked that Asch thought they would seriously do that. "No no no, I was talking about blowing up everything above ground so the rubble would hide the shelter entrances and heading out through the escape tunnels, collapsing them after us. Van might know the old exits but we dug new ones first thing."

"You can do that?" Even Guy had never heard of something like that.

"The ultimate scorched earth policy." There had once been a holy war to get Auldrant under Daath's control after the Outer Lands had been raised and confirmed to work (they knew now) and focus had gone from immediate survival to following the Score. It had been halfway through the second fonstone. "They just pushed a bunch of the fifth fonon together and couldn't control Efreet, but they were underground. He rampaged on the surface but eventually went back to the fon belt."

"…It was during the First Crusade, after the heretic Sheridan and his followers' refuge was found by the Order." Ion bowed his head, ashamed of his predecessors' actions.

"Now that I think about it…" Noelle looked grim. "I was instructed to get one of Undine's blessed weapons from the casino in Keterberg awhile ago."

"I hope it doesn't come to that. Undine might flood the tunnels." Natalia determinedly put Sheridan aside, Kimlasca's city or not. "Luke, how are we doing on gels? You and I can only heal one target at a time," unlike Tear. "And life bottles." Natalia's arte revive, which resurrected someone the next time they died was much better than Tear's resurrect, since Tear would have to stop what she was doing to cast that while Natalia could just cast hers at the beginning of battle or whenever it was convenient. However, it could only be cast on those who were living at the time. The Jewel of Lorelei filled Luke with power, but his new seventh fonon artes were erratic to say the least. His whole-party heal arte would sometimes heal the enemy as well as his allies no matter how he tried to target it, and he _only_ had a resurrect arte that affected everything in range. Good as a last resort or against single enemies, but Time Stop and Fix, which both healed a single person and cured ailments, were the only fonic artes that he used frequently.

"I've got as many of everything as the pack can hold," Luke reassured her. "Just… Guys?"

Guy and the others waited for him to say whatever he was going to.

"If I start casting an arte that you don't recognize, jump off the ship. I figured out how to make hyperresonance look like a normal fonic arte." He smiled, and it wasn't entirely forced. "If I said 'run' or something he'd have the sense to run too. Lorelei or not, he won't survive a hyperresonance that hits him directly."

"If you try to use hyperresonance in a battle with Van you're not going to be able to control it," Asch reminded him. "I know you think you can pull yourself together again the way you did after altering time, but let's stick to the plan if we can. Since Tear's not here he'll think he's safe even after he figures out we have the key." As the group's main seventh fonist Tear had been focusing on training both of them. Luke had learned her hymns easily, Asch still didn't really understand what some of the symbolism was supposed to mean no matter how much they explained it, so the plan was for Asch to use the Key while Luke sung.

"Well, I'd better get going." Noelle waved goodbye and was soon flying up, lost to sight in the drifting fonons.

"It's probably moot. It will take him awhile to figure out why the miasma isn't returning, hopefully, and by that point Tear and the others should have caught up with us." Still, Asch kept a lookout.


	8. Erebus

"Oh thank Lorelei!"

"Anise, you do realize that the Tartarus is floating in the core and is not solid ground?"

"Shut up! Don't remind me."

"Rough flight?" Asch inquired, a corner of his mouth turned up.

"For some reason the planet storm slowing down made the turbulence worse," Noelle reported. "It's a good thing we didn't try using the Albiore III."

"What happened to Sheridan?"

It fell to Jade to tell the Princess what had happened. "It was Sync and Legretta. They are both dead, and apparently Van discovered that several people had been placed into replica bodies. Many of his troops must have died over those fifteen days, and that turns out to have included Arietta."

"I'm going to kill him."Anise didn't let go of the pillar even when Ion went to her side. "She wasn't very bright, but she was loyal, you know? And Van had Legretta drug her and killed her in her sleep because he thought she might be used against him somehow."

"I'm sorry."

"Luke, it's not your fault. You weren't even the one that killed her in the other future. You saved her and then that bastard Van killed her. I'm gonna kill those bastards!"

"Anise?"

"Don't worry, Ion. I won't let them get their hands on you. They can't tell you're a… replica replica? Anyway." She hugged him now instead of the pillar.

"What about Sheridan?" It was good that there were three fewer god-generals in the world, but that wasn't Natalia's primary concern at the moment. Her people were.

"Once the god-generals were disposed of and the defense systems repaired – they managed to take out three stations and there were, as you know, three of us to stand guard – the fact that Van had moved in for the kill became an advantage. When Belkend's navy arrived the soldiers carried by most of his remaining landships had already been taken down by Sheridan's roving fontech guards, although they weren't very good at telling friend from foe," Jade gave Noelle a look of reproof at this, "and with the few openings they had made in the minefield closed off so they had nowhere to run they were dead in the water. There isn't much left of the city but rubble, but only Contingency Plan C had to be activated before the reinforcements got there, which was abandoning all of the upper city but the defense stations and reviving the guards, who attacked everything in sight _including the defense stations_. I don't think there will be more than a few hundred permanent casualties, although they were starting to run out of life bottles when the reinforcements arrived."

"That plagiarist Dist made off with one of the guards." Plagiarist was Sheridan's equivalent of Keterberg's tourist.

"At least that meant one fewer to fight. Why couldn't you just blow up the city? It would have had the same effect and it wouldn't have taken us longer to finish off _all twenty of those things_ than the god-generals, and they took out a fourth of our reinforcements! What was General Sheridan thinking… never mind." He had been thinking about surviving an onslaught of fanatic Oracle knights, or at least killing enough the people that escaped would hopefully been able to find someplace safe before they recovered enough to start looking.

"I haven't seen fontech like those outside of the sephiroth and Yulia City." Tear shook her head in wonder. "I can't believe the Outer Lands used to know things we don't remember."

"Well, he was a heretic." Ion sighed. "In the old days that often meant someone who was preserving knowledge the Order wanted dead and buried."

"The books still exist, but we don't look at them. We want to build our own future, and as long as the Order thinks they got them all we're safe." Noelle smiled. "But the Order's changing. Maybe we can go find them someday. We've already lost the clues for all but six of the caches, and one of those was on Hod."

"Jade."

"Yes, Luke?"

"You actually look… harried." The mind boggled.

"They had called those things up before we arrived since they didn't know we were coming, and we found ourselves having to deal with eight of them _and _Sync_ and_ Legretta. There simply was not time to cast fonic artes without dying and the battle devolved into positioning ourselves so that the fontech dolls went primarily after the other group, and Tear made the mistake of starting to cast holy song early on. They were programmed to go after seventh fonists above all other targets, since they're both the healers and usually Order members, it seems." Jade took a deep breath. "Or it might be users of the Yulian Fonic Hymns in particular, they didn't go quite as berserk after she cast resurrection. We would have been doomed if the militia hadn't used life bottles and gels on us from cover. I'm looking forward to fighting Van, after_ that _bit of exercise." Dying that many times that quickly would wear on _anyone_.

"And those two are _fast_. Tokunaga's a big target compared to them. And right after finishing them off I had to get on an Albiore after throwing up on our last flight and still having to cast fonic artes. I'm not moving unless it's to kill Van," Anise declared, having sunk to the ground.

"Do you have anything to eat?" Tear asked pitifully.

Anise groaned. "Don't mention food!"

"Guy, is this working?"

"Everything's going back to normal, and it looks like it changed things on the ride down for you guys pretty drastically. Don't worry, the Tartarus is holding and the miasma is contained."

"That's good." Jade leaned against a wall. "If I am woken up for anything I will commit murder. Except if it's curry or Van, then I murder them."

"Uh, duly noted." Guy backed away.

"If you make curry I will kill you. That stuff smells. If you make them make it and I throw up, it will be on _you_, Jade."

"You can try."

"Maybe just a rice ball? Something?" Tear was famished.

"Not those shrimp rice balls, Luke! I'll smell the shrimp." Anise shuddered as Ion rubbed her back soothingly. "Can you take Tear somewhere else so I don't have to hear you talk about food?"

"Sure. Come on, Tear, lean on me." Luke offered her his shoulder and took her down into someplace they could cook while waiting for Anise' stomach to settle.

-

The ship's stellar navigation clock was broken and there was no real way to tell time in the core. Van arrived shortly after they ran out of kombu. Jade might have grown addicted to curry in Grand Chokmah but in Keterburg they ate a lot of seafood, partially because it was too cold for anything but seaweed to grow. Natalia had decided to make oden for some reason, and that was a hard, hard thing to make well enough to suit a native's palate. Jade had callously tossed the abomination overboard, made a batch for himself, dropped hints that he'd put something unspeakable in it, and forced the others, who were craving some because of the smell, to make another batch. Jade's smelled better but they weren't foolish enough to trust that smile.

Jade the resort king had managed to construct a lounge chair on the deck in order to kill time even though there wasn't any sun to bathe in here. He still had a good view of the light show that was the core. One of the camp stoves was keeping his oden warm and he'd left some books behind in his quarters since he could just buy additional copies when he next found the time for light recreational reading.

He was working on Professor Iemon's _Trinity: An examination of the third fonon in the planet storm, sea-level atmosphere and upper atmosphere_, when Largo was dropped down on him from above brandishing his axe/scythe. As there was no sun to block out here Jade would have had no idea if Largo hadn't yelled. Since he did have warning, Jade rolled out of the way, flung his book to safety and, wincing, tipped over the oden so Largo landed on it and the camp stove. If it weren't for the pesky safety railing he would have slid over the edge.

Van, who was flying, could have caught him, it wasn't as if there was anything to go splat against here, but it was the principle of the matter.

Largo's crash landing had caught the attention of the others. Jade hesitated, but since Largo was right in front of him and now they were going to be out of kombu until Noelle next came to check on them and they could leave and go right to Keterberg (Luke had left before doing the shopping, and it wasn't until they were in Sheridan that Jade had realized that they only had six bundles of the stuff: he'd gotten used to being able to eat his favorites while they were gallivanting all over the world), he remained fighting Largo, soon joined by Guy and Anise, while the others fought Van.

Van had left Largo to keep Jade busy and then gone over to where Natalia was napping (they'd taken a cue from Jade and moved things on deck) with her head on Asch's lap, Luke was brushing Tear's hair, and Tear was playing with Mieu, theoretically so that he wouldn't start making too much noise and wake Natalia up.

Luke was the first person to notice the falling Largo and flung Mieu into the item bag. Natalia was torn over whether or not to head over there. Largo was her father and while Guy could heal himself none of the three facing him were seventh fonists while everyone here was one even if Asch didn't actually have any healing artes and Luke's were… erratic.

"Forcing me to come to a battleground of your choosing? You've improved, Asch."

"Be silent!" Natalia, unlike the others, had a ranged weapon, and so had no need to wait until Van was pinned down to launch an attack: if they started to cast while he was still outside of combat he could just swoop down attack the fonist without having to worry about whoever he was fighting at the moment going for his back while he was occupied. Shoot the fonists. Natalia might not be descended from the leader of Lanvaldear and the founder of the school, but she knew the principles.

She would actually be at somewhat of a disadvantage against Largo, she noted idly. "Tear!" She ordered as Van descended, his sword blocked by Asch's as Natalia started on revive. "They could use you over there: send…" Hmm, Luke and Asch were both primarily swordsmen, and with Tear gone they could use an attack fonist even if her first inclination was to ask for Guy, out of some ingrained instinct that meat shields were an archer's best friends, or her cousin's best friends in any case. "Jade here!"

"She's right," Luke agreed, slicing for Van's back. "They don't have a healer and it's better if you're not fighting him!" Largo would most likely fall first and it would be better if four others could hold him down while Tear sang the hymn. They needed to free Lorelei instead of just kill Van, and that meant they needed Largo out of the picture first so he couldn't interfere.

It would be better if they could have three keep Van busy while the other four finished off Largo, Tear mused as she ran over and tagged Jade out, but Van was good enough to require four opponents.

It was amazing that she wasn't trying to talk to Van and that Natalia had shot first instead of giving a speech. What had changed, Tear wondered as she ran through holy song almost on autopilot while Anise went into a dual dragon surge, giving Guy enough time to duck out of the melee and center without letting Largo break loose.

Luke and Asch had changed, she realized. And knowing just what Van would have done with a month and a half to work in without Luke and Asch to stop him. The percentage of replicas in Sheridan alone, despite their defenses! And it was nothing compared to Belkend's, Chesedonia's, Baticul's… forget Daath.

The rough estimate was that a third of the world's population had died in that time. Akzeriuth had been… over so fast. They all knew Luke still had nightmares, but it seemed like a nightmare itself. Tear had grown up in Yulia City, she understood the horror of the miasma, but even… Nothing too terrible had happened, besides Akzeriuth, and they had still partly blamed that on Luke, not Van.

But now they had living, breathing reminders… Ginji had just smiled wryly. Noelle had been a little shocked, and so had the rest of them. Noelle was _good_ at staying out of trouble. Anise they'd almost expected, Natalia had been a small surprise, Jade had found it ironic enough to laugh hard enough that if it were anyone but Jade they would have thought he was hysterical… She and Guy were both their original selves. The people Van had ties to. Meaning they had most likely been captured knowing that their friends were dead while they were alive and without any idea what had happened to Luke and Asch. Or at least they hoped they hadn't known Luke was being tortured and been unable to help him, Asch as well.

They were fighting a single opponent but Tear had to fight back the urge to cast Judgment.

What Van was doing was _wrong_. He had to be stopped.

People with miasma poisoning stayed out of sight or didn't reveal it, if they even knew. The people of Akzeriuth hadn't even left bodies behind.

It just hadn't seemed real.

She wanted to wake up, but as soon as razing phoenix (an appropriate name, wasn't it?) dropped Largo she started to get ready to sing the preludes to her lullaby that would hopefully wake up Lorelei instead as Guy and Anise ran over to free up Luke and Asch so they could combine their weapon and armor into the Key of Lorelei.

Natalia had to drop back to cast revive on Anise and Guy, although the ones they replaced had still had the little feathers floating and letting her know it was active. If they were here Largo had to be already dead, but she didn't have time to think about that right now. The fact that, well, she had died, and he was working for the one who had to have been responsible had helped her deal with lingering family feelings the same way it had Tear. Largo had helped the one who had killed her, if he hadn't done it himself: Ingobert had practically locked her in her room to keep her from following Luke to Akzeriuth. Ingobert was her father. Origins didn't matter in the same way that Luke was just as much her cousin as Asch was.

What mattered was the memories people shared, that they stood by each other.

"Singing the hymn without the key, Mystearica? You might be able to fight me for Lorelei's pact-bound service, but I already control it! Without the Key there is no point to this battle!" His body seemed to change, revealing the seventh fonons she had sensed dormant inside it as he drew on Lorelei's power.

Natalia started on scare shot next.

-

Luke, Asch and Tear had taken cover so Van couldn't see what they were up to. "Do these wear off?" Asch pointed at the revive marker.

"Not unless the battle ends." And even if they were out of it the rest were still fighting.

"Good. Luke?"

"Yes?" Luke was putting on a resist ring since he'd just handed over the jewel. There was probably something better, but he wasn't going to bother digging through the item bag right now. He generally wore a sephira since he was the one in charge of shopping and that meant he was the one who got an earful if they didn't have enough money, although that made it utterly unfair that they'd made him go ask his mother for money when he'd saved more than enough learning how to be price-savvy to purchase those books out of the travel funds they only still had because of him… Well, he wasn't going to grumble, the old-old Luke had grumbled and it never did any good.

Asch held out the sword to him. "Me?" Luke stared at it. "It should be you. You had to put up with him for longer."

"And you were created to die by him."

"You had all that stuff done to you to create me."

"You…"

"Excuse me?"

"What, Tear?" They both looked at her.

"Eenie, meenie…"

"That always ends on the second person if there are two people," Luke told her. Turning to Asch, he suggested, "Rock paper scissors?"

Asch nodded.

"Rock, paper, scissors."

Asch's rock broke Luke's scissors and Asch took the Key of Lorelei. "How are they doing?"

Luke looked over the bulkhead. "Another... No, Jade just went into overlimit. And there went Anise. Tear, you might want to start singing."

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Ion asked. Or they thought he asked, the last few words were drowned out by the thunder of Jade's indignation.

"You just rest up, okay? You've done enough already. I always worry when you do that, I know radiant howl makes it safe for you to use that arte to come onto the battlefield to use it while you're casting it, but I didn't do all this so you could die of exhaustion helping me."

"I don't like not being able to help."

Luke chuckled a bit, sitting down against the wall. "I know the feeling. Being useless is horrible."

Asch was listening, waiting for the right moment. The battle's sounds calmed after Anise's racket, and then the Grand Fonic Hymn reached its climax. He ran forward.

Luke rested his head on his knees, tired. Hiding his eyes was pointless when he was watching through Asch, anyway.

And then it was over, but it wasn't. He knew, somehow, that it wasn't over, the future wasn't saved until the score was gone, and there simply weren't enough free fonons in the fon belt or the planet storm to destroy it.

There were enough in his body, though.

He didn't even have time to suggest it before Lorelei took the Key that Yulia had used to seal him into a stable form and into the pact as well as the core and turned it on himself.

It was a… strange feeling, but so very logical to Lorelei, to him. They were both manifestations of the seventh fonon. They weren't dead as long as those fonons endured, not really. Lorelei was bound and had gotten himself into this mess: Luke was free and had a life to live. It made sense.

But it was so strange to feel the same vastness that he had been when he had restored Auldrant from a world where originals were dying and replicas were born nameless to one where both could live become a permanent part of him. Yulia had bound the form of Lorelei that she controlled to have this power and that form alone so that the Score would be enforced. Now Luke was the mind of the seventh fonon and all seven knew it needed someone to keep it working right, what with the planet storm and the remaining miasma and…

The planet storm. The miasma.

He was going to have to stay in the core. There just weren't enough free fonons to create an extra self so that he could stick them with the task.

It would take five years, if he kept the levels on Auldrant's surface so low that no healing artes would work. Fifty if he let things stay the way they were now while the world recovered.

Asch wasn't happy about it, but it was sort of like the fact that Asch wasn't exactly happy about the fact that he had a choice between breaking Natalia's heart and his promises yet again (which he wouldn't do) or ending up king. Luke could die destroying the miasma, which Asch would_ not_ let happen; let the miasma come back, which neither would; or stay here.

When he thought about it, since he had this power and people would be after it, this was the safest place for him. It wasn't like they couldn't visit. Sheridan wasn't going to be working on the rocket project very seriously for awhile because they had rebuilding to get to (fixing the fontech that made the seawater drinkable took priority over _everything_), so the core was better than the fon belt.

This had been Lorelei's prison, its deathbed, but Luke thought it was pretty. "I can come out and visit," he told Asch aloud out of the blue and, while the others were wondering why the non sequitur, added, "Not more than a week at a time, though I can do it more often as time goes by. Not for a few months, though, until things settle down." The flows were _haywire_, and he'd better fix that if he wanted Noelle to be able to get down the rest of the way safely sometime this week.

"I suppose it's better than the alternative," Asch informed him. "Here. You'd better keep this." He handed over the Key.

The Key that might be used to create another Score. It wouldn't be all-predicting, since the world was about half immune to bindings like that right now what with all the replicas, but still, the risk was too much. Luke took it and focused power into it, then threw it upwards. "It will react with the miasma until it's purified as much as it can and then it will dissolve," he explained, part of him wielding it with just that intent as he spoke to them. "The seventh fonons that will release will speed things up."

"Do you know how long it will take?"

"Asch," and Luke's voice was gentle. "I can't see the future. That was most of the point of all this."

"I suppose you're right."

"Guy, explain."

"Me? I don't know what's so important that they're ignoring Van's body either."

"Sorry, force of habit." Jade's smile wasn't all that apologetic. "All me to correct myself. _Luke_, explain."


	9. Nyx

-

"Are you sure you'll be okay, here all alone?" Guy looked at the confines of the ship and was seriously doubtful. It wasn't the manor, but it wasn't big either.

"I can always talk to Asch, or any of you by sort of throwing my voice. I control sound, remember? And Noelle will be coming by to drop off supplies. Not to mention that…" Luke's feet left the deck. "I can fly. The Tartarus is just the only thing I can stand on in the core, I have plenty of room to run, or fly, around in."

"I'll send some textbooks with Noelle," Asch informed him. "And we'll be visiting as soon as we explain things to people."

"Uh, Asch? I remember how to speak Ancient Ispanian, and modern pronunciation is awful. I know math, and… a lot of stuff."

"Guy's right, you're going to be bored stiff." Asch folded his arms.

"Bored? Not when I have all this work to do." Luke waved off his concern. "And Mieu's staying, remember?"

"I have to stay by Master's side for a whole year." And Mieu thought this place was really neat, although it could use more grass. Master had promised to work on that.

Ion sighed. "I wish I could stay, but Anise and I have a lot of work to do." Reforming the order would take time, especially because unless someone had found him and Dist while they were down here Mohs was still a threat. "I'll come visit."

"Ion, don't think of it as your duty as fon master or anything. If you do want to do me a favor," Luke handed Tear a sheet of paper torn out of his diary with a grin, "then you guys can do the shopping for once." He pointed up. "The Albiore's almost here. Are you guys all packed?"

"Why are you trying to send us off right away?" Jade raised a suspicious eyebrow.

"Because they're going kind of nuts up there and the sooner you tell them it's over the sooner they can calm down, stop worrying about landship fleets appearing out of nowhere, and start fixing up the damage. Asch, our father is in Belkend, by the way. After what happened to Sheridan he had to go back to the duchy and work on the defenses." Luke stopped hovering and dropped easily to the deck as Noelle came in for a landing. "It's easy to destroy things. Fixing them is harder."

"Unless I've lost count," Anise told them, "we're about when you came back, Luke."

"It was two days ago." He smiled. "Or, actually, it wasn't."


End file.
